Lew Whittington

City Lights Books founding poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and poet Michael McClure both died this past year, McClure at 87, Ferlinghetti was 104.

For 50 years he was known around the world as master of suspense, from his 1928 silent The Lodger to 1972’s Frenzy, Alfred Hitchcock continued to mesmerize audiences.

Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono has been fighting for the human rights and justice since her student days as an activist at the University of Hawaii in the ’70s. Sen.

“an engrossing portrait of the artist, his art, and his incorrigible personality.”

In Mozart: The Reign of Love musical historian Jan Swafford dispels the myths and popular lore about Mozart in Peter Shaffer’s hit play and movie Amadeus.

“This is a well-sourced biography and dimensional portrait that bypasses much of the usual gossip around this inimitable star.”

“Souder’s biography is a stylistic portrait of a towering American original.”

For three decades photographer Dana Gluckstein has been documenting the lives of indigenous nations.

Lee and Adriano are a gay couple on sabbatical from their public relations tech firm to Orvieto, Italy, who become ensnared in an international conspiracy involving the death of Andrea, a Catholic

“At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the

“Places I’ve Taken My Body is an unblinking personal journey that takes us to places we all need to know and understand better.”

Curzio Malaparte is pictured on the cover at his desk with official-looking papers wearing a satin mask and indeed, his many masks are (in)visible in A Foreigner in Paris, newly translated

Political historians Mike Davis and Jon Wiener chronicle the civil rights movements that emerged in Los Angeles during the 1960s in Set the Night on Fire.

In the early ’90s, novelist Paul Lisicky was awarded back-to-back literary fellowships that brought him to Provincetown, RI, one of a group of colleagues paid to nurture their craft.

Sam Wasson’s biography of Bob Fosse was an engrossing portrait of a complex artist and man. It was also a fabulous read, so fast-paced that it felt like having a three-week affair with Fosse.

Jeanine Basinger’s The Movie Musical! is an in-depth history of a distinctly American art form that combined cinematic arts with music, dance, theater, and design.

Ted Gioia's books on jazz, blues, and folk music are both scholarly and entertaining, and his latest volume Music: A Subversive History is perhaps his most ambitious.

Elaine Stritch was the Broadway belter with a foghorn in both musicals and straight drama—from the caustic Joanne in Sondheim’s Company to the tragic Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia

In his introduction to A Wild and Precious Life Joshua Lyon admits to being intimidated when he was interviewed by Edie Windsor in the hope that he would help write her to write about her

Saeed Jones is an award-winning poet, editor, and co-host of BuzzFeed’s AM to PM morning show. His latest book How We Fight for Our Lives is his powerful coming of age memoir.

“a clear-eyed portrait of the realities of the arts scene of the era.

“Suchet brings journalistic objectivity, expert analysis, and sensitivity to his portrait of Tchaikovsky the man, his times, and his music.”

LGBTQ communities in the US are gearing up for June gay pride parades, and this year will also commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Inn riots that continue to symbolize the coming out

“Blanco’s power as a poet lies in the singular intimacy, structural craft, intoxicating imagery, and inner rhythms of his verse.”

“77 is, among other things, a potent reminder of the gruesome paths of totalitarian dictators.”

“Castellani delivers a touching, and often eloquent dramatization of one of the most legendary gay couples in theatrical history.”

James Magee is renowned for his remote architectural sculpture, most famously “The Hill,” which he has been creating for 40 years or so on 2000 acres of land he owns outside of El Paso, Texas.

Harvey Milk was on the San Francisco board of supervisors and was the most high-profile openly gay elected officials in the world when he was gunned down in his office 40 years ago this month.

". . .a major achievement in the biographer’s art."

At the time of his death in 1625, at age 55, James I of England had been already ill with several maladies of the time, but rumors immediately surfaced that he had been poisoned by George Villiers,

Verdi’s life was the stuff operas are made of: sex scandals, political turmoil, creative pitfalls, testy divas, and meddling producers, but nothing stopped him from becoming the most famous opera c

Laura Jacobs’ Celestial Bodies: How to Look at Dance delves into the lasting appeal of classical ballets like Giselle, La Sylphide, Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, and, of course,

The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke is Jeffrey C. Stewart’s biography of one of the most influential scholars of the early 20th century.

In addition to being a prolific biographer, and LGBTQ historian, Martin Duberman has published his candid memoirs, Midlife Queer, Cures, and most recently his diary Waiting to Land

Laurie Gwen Shapiro’s The Stowaway is the adventure of Billy Gawronski, a first-generation Polish-American living in Bayside, New York, who on the day of his graduation from high school at

Richard Avedon was the most famous fashion photographer in the world, but for much of his life struggled to be taken seriously as an art photographer.

In the afterword of Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s new collection of poems The Last Cigarette on Earth the poet intimates “I wrote these poems not so much out of a need to create but out of a need

“Elaine Hayes’ vivid portrait of Sarah Vaughan’s life, times, and indelible musical legacy reveals why she was indeed called The Divine One.”   

Angela Jackson’s biography A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun: The Life and Legacy of Gwendolyn Brooks comes on the eve of the 100th anniversary of Brooks’ birth.

Robert Lowell was at the forefront of post WWII American letters, his volumes of poetry The Mills of the Kavanaughs, Life Studies, and Lord Weary’s Castle among the most lauded po

Andrew Dickson is former arts editor at the Guardian, was at the 2012 Shakespeare festival at the Globe Theater in London highlighted by productions of Shakespeare from all over the world

Kahlil Gibran’s prose, visual art and advocacy for transcultural unity made him a citizen of the world during his lifetime, admired in the east and west.

Seiji Ozawa was a gifted piano student studying at Toho Gakuen School of Music in Japan, but after he hurt his hand playing rugby, he switched to conducting and received a scholarship to study unde

You Will Not Have My Hate is French journalist Antoine Leiris’ memoir written in the days after he learned that his wife Hélène Muyal-Leiris had been slaughtered at the Bataclan Theatre in

Rachel Corbett is editor of Modern Painter magazine and her arts coverage appears in The New Yorker and The New York Times.

Richard Bellamy was the 60s visionary who championed the new wave of American abstract expressionists and who had the first eye for pop-art, minimalism, and performance happenings in the fabled Gre

“The real war will never get in the books.” J.

Often risking her own safety, Chilean photographer Paz Errázuriz chronicled the lives of her fellow Chileans who were oppressed, confined, and otherwise cast out citizens during the brutal military

Mohan Bhasker is a physician in Los Angeles as well as a nature photographer of artistry and daring.

British poet Philip Larkin’s unconventional life and career is revealed in unique fashion in Richard Bradford’s The Importance of Elsewhere, a volume of photographs by the poet, who consid

Science writer Lauren Redniss takes us on a most meditative, enchanting, and perilous journey via her prose and with her stunning artwork in Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Futu

Boston Symphony Orchestra violist Mark Ludwig is founder of the Terezin Music Foundation, a collective of musicians and composers dedicated to freedom of expression in honor of those artists who pe

“an evocative and provoking collection . . .”

In 1969 eight talented African American athletes risked their athletic scholarships and likely their NFL careers by demanding an end to institutional racism at Syracuse University.

“Arthur Miller remains a towering American playwright for all seasons.”

Writer Dale Peck was a journalism student at Columbia University when he joined ACT-UP at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

German scholar Robert Beachy’s Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity adds to the growing literature of pre-Stonewall GLBTQ history.

“a truly remarkable story of a born activist.”

“Gavin keeps focus on what Peggy Lee was doing musically even as everything else in her life was sensationally spiraling out of control.”

“Martin’s historical scope and elegiac prose, laced through with exparlance of the period, is not only grandly entertaining to read, it rescues this bit of cultural history and gives Whitma

“Lucy Moore had not written about dance until this book, but her research and notations are meticulous, and beyond that, her command and authority of describing performance, historical cont

“For readers with more than a passing interest in this period of American theater and film, The Selected Letters of Elia Kazan is a real-time archive from a semina

“It seems, indeed, that author Gallagher and her subject share more in common when it comes to the art of subterfuge.”