Tag Archives: Books

Jonah Raskin :
BOOKS | El Paso poet Bobby Byrd soars

In ‘Otherwise, My Life Is Ordinary,’ Bobby Byrd has taken ordinary things and people and turned them into something extraordinary. By Jonah Raskin | The Rag Blog | June 20, 2014 [Otherwise My Life Is Ordinary: Poems by Bobby Byrd … Continue reading

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Ron Jacobs :
BOOKS | A ‘Bohemian’ comic rhapsody

Paul Buhle and David Berger’s graphic history is a fascinating collection of personalities, their lives drawn in a manner equal to the stories they tell. By Ron Jacobs | The Rag Blog | June 5, 2014 [Bohemians: A Graphic History … Continue reading

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Kate Braun :
BOOKS | Mariann Garner-Wizard’s informative and timely ‘Hempseed Food’

This book is chock-full of recipes and useful information that will fascinate readers who care deeply about what they eat, how it is prepared, and what nutrients it contains. By Kate Braun | The Rag Blog | June 3, 2014 … Continue reading

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Ron Jacobs :
BOOKS | Anand Gopal’s ‘No Good Men Among the Living’

Through the lives of three Afghans, Gopal creates a vivid history of  the U.S. occupation and exposes the lies and misunderstandings the war is based on. By Ron Jacobs | The Rag Blog | April 20, 2014 [No Good Men … Continue reading

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Jonah Raskin :
BOOKS | Gordon Young’s ‘Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City’

‘Teardown’ has the kind of heart that once made Flint, Michigan, a center of trade union and labor activism. By Jonah Raskin | The Rag Blog | May 13, 2014 [Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City by Gordon Young (June … Continue reading

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Paul Buhle and Milton Knight :
BOOKS | C.L.R. James: Back in style, black in style

‘C.L.R. James in Imperial Britain’ opens up the issue of the Third World struggle in an elegant and memorable way. By Paul Buhle and Milton Knight | Truthout | May 5, 2014 Author’s note: This marks the first appearance of … Continue reading

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Ron Jacobs :
BOOKS | On leave from imperial war

Plainspoken but eloquent, David Anselme’s ‘On Leave,’ is a novel about war; about the soldiers who fight them and the civilians who send them. By Ron Jacobs | The Rag Blog | March 22, 2014 [On Leave: A Novel by … Continue reading

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Jonah Raskin :
BOOKS | ‘Weed Land’ author Peter Hecht’s no gonzo journalist

In Hecht’s book, the Feds are always heavy, the growers usually naïve, and it’s almost always bad news. By Jonah Raskin | The Rag Blog | April 9, 2014 [Weed Land: Inside America’s Marijuana Epicenter and How Pot Went Legit … Continue reading

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METRO | Tom Zigal’s gripping post-Katrina novel wins state’s top literary award

By Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog | April 9, 2014 AUSTIN — Austin novelist Thomas Zigal has won the prestigious Jesse Jones award for fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters for his highly-acclaimed novel about post-Katrina New Orleans, … Continue reading

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Lamar W. Hankins :
Aslan’s portrayal of Jesus as revolutionary zealot is fanciful history / 2

Aslan provides embellishments that make for an interesting read but many of his assumptions, according to Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, lack historical accuracy. By Lamar W. Hankins | The Rag Blog | April 8, 2014 Part two of two. In … Continue reading

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Robert Jensen :
BOOKS | Barking dogs and sinking ships: Journalism’s search for metaphor and meaning

Dean Starkman explains why journalists often aren’t alert watchdogs, but he can’t see why limiting the profession to the role of a barking dog is, quite literally, a dead end. By Robert Jensen | The Rag Blog | April 2, … Continue reading

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Lamar W. Hankins :
Aslan’s portrayal of Jesus as revolutionary zealot is fanciful history

Mistakes in ‘Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth,’ show that Reza Aslan lacks the necessary background to write a historical work about the period and Jesus’s place in it. By Lamar W. Hankins | The Rag Blog … Continue reading

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