Critics’ Choices and other notable shows: Terry Adams Rock & Roll Quartet, Juana Molina, Struck by Lightning, David Dondero, Natacha Atlas, and more
Author Archives: Renaldo Migaldi
Posted inNews & Politics
A Son of Sun
It’s been 50 years since he recorded at Sam Phillips’s legendary studio and more than 30 since he quit music to drive a limo, but rockabilly pioneer Hayden Thompson is getting back into the business.
Posted inArts & Culture
Thomas E. Ricks
As public support for the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq continues to dwindle, there’s certainly no shortage of published critiques of the enterprise. But Thomas Ricks’s sober assessment Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (Penguin) stands out not only for its panoramic sweep but also for the author’s willingness to criticize officers […]
Posted inArts & Culture
John Dean
Since coming to prominence in 1973 as the White House lawyer who exposed Richard M. Nixon and his circle to a Senate committee during Watergate, John Dean has established himself as a cloth-coat conservative who’s willing to cry foul on the betrayal of democratic principles; his 2004 book, Worse Than Watergate, was an incisive critique […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Greg Palast
Muckraking journalist Greg Palast specializes in stories that get disturbingly little play in the U.S. media. In 2001, for example, he was the first to reveal how Florida Republicans used outside contractors to disenfranchise thousands of minority voters in that state, tilting the 2000 election to George W. Bush. Since then he has doggedly pursued […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Brief Reviews
THE NYMPHOS OF ROCKY FLATS | Mario Acevedo | Rayo | Former infantryman Mario Acevedo manages to seamlessly blend several genres in his smooth, wryly funny debut novel. Nymphos starts off as a war thriller: enlisted grunt Felix Gomez is just trying to survive in Iraq when he mistakenly shoots a civilian girl who bleeds […]
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How Everything Went Worng
Three new books dig toward the roots of the mess we’re in today.
Posted inArts & Culture
John Crawford
John Crawford was on his honeymoon and two credits away from college graduation when an e-mail informed him that his Florida National Guard unit would be sent to Iraq for the March 2003 invasion–a mission that ended up lasting much longer than he and his cohorts were promised. In The Last True Story I’ll Ever […]
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Joseph Wilson
In 2002 the CIA sent Joseph Wilson, longtime diplomat and former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, to the west African nation of Niger to investigate suspicions that Saddam Hussein had tried to obtain uranium mined there for use in nuclear weapons. He returned to report that the claims were groundless, only to hear George Bush tell […]
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Christopher Scheer
The evidence is mounting that George W. Bush and his neoconservative gurus sold the American electorate on the Iraq war by shoveling blatant lies that went far beyond the usual spin and BS of politics. Yet while recent months have seen those lies fray–and the arguments for war collapse into a din of accusations, backpedaling, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Neal Pollack: Shut Up!
To the editors: While Neal Pollack may be uninterested in hearing what anyone other than himself thinks about the upcoming attack on Iraq (“Everybody Shut Up!” February 28), he should remember that however smug, self-righteous, and lacking in originality some of the pundits and so-called “poets” may be, they nonetheless do speak for a lot […]
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Who Knew?
A Burbank liquor store owner tries to put his life back together as the FBI grills his former employee.
Posted inArts & Culture
Lecture Notes: beyond Mir survival
When Soviet cosmonaut Anatoly Pavlovich Artsebarski climbed into his rocket on its launchpad in Kazakhstan on May 18, 1991, he had little idea that his country was about to go through a major political upheaval. As commander of the Soyuz TM-12 spacecraft, he blasted off with two crewmates–Sergei Krikalev and Helen Sharman–to rendezvous and dock […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Natural Born Killers
Up in Michigan the men go hunting every fall, and my father is one of them. Some of his buddies are particularly enthusiastic about deer hunting, but my father prefers to hunt birds. And for that you really need a dog. It’s possible to hunt birds without a dog, but few hunters would consider that […]