Zombie Music
"Jazz is dead!" "Long live jazz!" These competing diagnoses define the genre and its evolving boundaries. And that means a future of interesting music.
Essays
Cops and American Culture
Why our culture of law enforcement—and tensions between police and communities—is a lot more nuanced and interesting than you might think.
Tales of the Fight Game
Both the LeDoux and Inoki fights are mere footnotes on Muhammad Ali’s athletic resume. Yet Paul Levy’s biography of LeDoux, The Fighting Frenchman, and Josh Gross’s exhaustive account of Ali vs. Inoki, give readers another way of looking at fights that elevated their importance, if not for Ali, then for the men who opposed him in these bouts.
Pooh Bear and Peter Rabbit
McDowell’s and Aalto’s respective books, published by the same press within two years of each other, are impressive studies of the relationship between literature and landscapes, both emotional and physical, in Potter’s Peter Rabbit and Milne’s Pooh Bear.
The Saga of Senate Bill 5
How state lawmakers seeking a solution to St. Louis County’s municipal revenue problems found more than they bargained for.
Miles Ahead
The recent film Miles Ahead says a lot about how Miles Davis treated women and, by extension, the ways jazz fans view his legacy.
With a Little Help From My Facebook Friends
Some grace notes to our original May 3 listicle of great films about jazz.
Time Travel in Life & Legacy
Life stories and individual memory define our roles, however small, in history. The good news of growing old is that we have more to tell.
Why Care About 85 When You Are 25?
The ailments, agist stereotypes, and ultimate end-point of death itself rarely figure in the minds of the young. Until, that is, the long-term consequences of our short-term denial become more and more obvious as the years pass.
On Old Age
"Our span of life is divided into parts; it consists of large circles enclosing smaller. One circle embraces and bounds the rest; it reaches from birth to the last day of existence."