Murderland is Creepy and Compelling
My review of Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser posted yesterday over at PopMatters. The Pulitzer Prize winner makes an intriguing argument that toxic emissions played a role in shaping what some criminologists call “the golden age of serial killers.” This book is creepy and disturbing, so don’t…
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OC Punk Music Book Fun But Flawed
My review of Tearing Down the Orange Curtain: How Punk Rock Brought Orange County To The World by Nate Jackson and Daniel Kohn was posted over at PopMatters.com today. Fun book and educational. It’s challenged by some clunky execution but I did add several new albums to my collection as a result of reading the…
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‘Unforgiving Places’ Provides a New Way to Think About Gun Violence
Rightly or wrongly, gun laws in America ain’t gonna change. Whether legislating different would be effective is a question that this country will not answer. So, Jens Ludwig provides a new way of thinking about violence involving firearms. In Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence, the Pritzker Director of the University of Chicago’s…
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Anyone Could Have Written Alex Van Halen’s Book
I recently reviewed Alex Van Halen’s memoir Brothers for PopMatters. Read the whole review here. In short, anyone with a decent amount of research could have written this book. Personal stories, insights, intimate memories ain’t present. The book quotes — over and over again — interviews with the late guitar legend Eddie Van Halen. If…
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Getting the Mix Just Right
I grew up with the name Tom Werman. I don’t recall if I saw it first on a Dokken cassette or maybe it was Motley Crue, but the prolific producer was as real to the ten-year-old me as any of the musicians on those tracks. So I was excited to read his new memoir Turn…
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