American Voters, American Writers, American Indians

Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy by Gary May

The nutshell: University of Delaware historian May chronicles the civil rights struggles—including the assassinations of Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr.—and political maneuverings that gave birth, eventually, to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 

Literary lovechild of: Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 and Alexander Keyssar’s The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States.

Novelist Lisa Zeidner

Flexible Is Not Something I’ve Been Accused Of

Lisa Zeidner is the author most recently of the novel Love Bomb, the story of a wedding that goes very wrong when the guests are taken hostage. She is also …

Letting Go of Philip Roth

Thoughts On the Retirement Of the Genius Who Immortalized My New Jersey World

I grew up surrounded by Rothschilds (the judge and his wife), Roths (owners of a chain of urban sneaker stores, they made a fortune off many iterations of Air Jordans), …

Just Another Band from L.A.

A Fictional Journey West from Baltimore

“Music is the only religion that delivers the goods …”

-Frank Zappa, born in Baltimore, died in Los Angeles

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Cherry stole the Apicellas’ still-smells-like-new Ford Granada a couple …