Kathy and Larry Weir

Community Radio in St. Louis Comes Back from the Dead

The new initiative aspires to acquire an FM frequency one day, and these volunteers who banded together to save community radio in St. Louis are a smart, tough, resourceful crowd. I expect to report their further success one fine day.

paperback books (Photo by Laura Rivera via Unsplash)

Yes, We Can Be Ambivalent About the Death of Mass-Market Paperbacks

Almost anyone over the age of 40—dare it be said, even 35?—has their own indelible memory of this crafty little reading medium.

The Purpose of a Cookery Book

Like many old cookbooks, Jessie Conrad’s contains recipes we all still know and enjoy, such as an apple tart from scratch, as well as those you might not have enjoyed in a generation or two, such as calf’s kidney on toast; bacon pudding; pigeons with carrots; and “Boiled Mutton for an Invalid.”

Unfettered; John Fetterman

Maverick or Misfit, a Senator Seeks the Center of Things

You might say, as the youngsters do, that Fetterman did his party “a solid” simply by winning, especially as that seemed not so assured during the campaign. The problems Fetterman encountered during his Senate campaign are mostly what “Unfettered“ is about.

Truman Capote

Three on a Match, or How the Other Two Die

Though their lives wound up linked, these three men could not have been more different. Perry Smith was as poor as used-up dirt. Truman Capote sparkled like diamonds and partied with stars: Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra…. Philip Seymour Hoffman landed in the shy middle, living off his talent as simply as one can in New York. What they shared was a sensitivity too raw to hide, and pain that sent them running.

Lessons on How to Live a Second Life

I ate a lot more cheese than usual while reading this book, which is testament to Finnerty’s passion for the subject and his ability to sell it on the page and verbally in the market. While reading through New Year’s, I realized I still had half a dozen leftover bits of different cheeses I found before Christmas in a supermarket in Metro East St. Louis.

How a ’60s Sci-Fi Television Series Boldly Spawned the Mythology of Our Time

‘Phasers on Stun!’ may not make future efforts at assembling a franchise-spanning overview of Star Trek obsolete, but Britt’s comprehensive approach makes such labor redundant, at least for now. He analyzes, anatomizes, celebrates, and criticizes every extant Trek television series and film in sometimes granular detail, making ‘Phasers on Stun!,’ despite its sloganeering subtitle, too accomplished to ignore.

City in winter

The Storms of St. Louis and the Shelter We Need for Them

Snow fell with the confidence of something that knew it would be felt. Streets emptied. Sound dulled. The city became a held breath between east and west, a place where movement slowed because it had to. There was nothing especially dramatic about this at first. Just cold. Just accumulation.

Pruitt-Igoe

The Haunting Memory of the Ghost Housing Project in St. Louis

It seems like St. Louis would like to bury this heart-wrenching failure beneath time. However, fortunately and unfortunately, it is hard to be metabolized. For fifty years, no developer could truly swallow the land left vacant after Pruitt-Igoe was demolished.

Erik McLean

What Are You Planning to Do with That?

For many college and university graduates, this is not a brief phase but a long-term reality, one that turns the job market into something that feels less like a promise and more like a gamble.

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