In this single, from n+1 (Issue 12), Kent Russell gives a remarkable (and very funny) report on the festival and a sympathetic account of the situation of the white poor in the US.

    He has a public meltdown while chaperoning Oasis at an awards ceremony; he’s lost joy in his bathroom full of rock’n’roll memorabilia; and his young son is in trouble at school for emulating rock star behaviour.Reluctantly Michael consults Mrs Henckel, a no-nonsense therapist with zero experience of pop culture. As Michael addresses his feelings about the past, in particular his failed teenage band, Mental Elf, he’s forced to confront the question: is it finally time to grow up and forget rock’n’roll?Michael Odell is a former contributing editor to Q magazine and has written about music for NME, the Guardian, the Independent and Spin, among others. Currently he does interviews and writes on family matters for The Times. He lives in Bristol."Please don't put your life in the hands of a rock 'n' roll band, who'll throw it all away." So advised Noel Gallagher in 1995 and Michael Odell ignored him anyway.One of Britain's most fearless rock interrogators, Odell turns his merciless searchlight on himself in this wry, compelling odyssey into the heart of his own - and rock n roll's - madness. Larks with the legends are all here (Bowie, McCartney, Mick `n' Keef ... Michael Buble) but it's his inner life which illuminates, his psyche traumatically crumbling as he confronts his chaotic past. Hilarious, tragic and timely, this is high farce in high (and low) places, uncovering why rock's lost highway is littered with the bodies of the righteous dreamers. Could it be because "the music people are all mad?" (Clue: yes.)' -- Sylvia Patterson, author of I'm Not with the Band `Hilarious and disarmingly honest; a journey into the neurosis of rock fame, but through doors you don't expect.' -- Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry `Rock Bottom is one of the best music books ever written, because Michael Odell knows music isn't about the musicians - it's about what it does to the listener, even if what it does ends up being wholly disastrous. It's sad, funny, fascinating and wise. And everyone who ever claimed a record changed their life should read it, and then think again.' -- Michael Hann, former Guardian music editor

    Elsewhere might be revealed in the tract-house adventures of a home-décor reality show, at a discount funeral home in a strip mall, or in the story of an armed man named Honey Bear in the hunt for his beloved but now missing sleeper sofa which he left in a store unit. Off Ramp shows us America through the humorous gaze of Hank Stuever, who finds beauty in the midst of the most unlikely and invisible lives and places.

    “The writers in this volume invite us into hidden places: a surgical pathologist’s laboratory, the boxing gym where a college professor and his student learn unexpected lessons about discipline, pain, and growing to adulthood. There are many discoveries to be made here, and I gladly invite the reader to an uncommonly rich and rewarding book.” — Kathleen Norris

    Club issue a slightly slanted pop-culture list filled with challenging opinions (Is David Bowie's "Young Americans" nearly ruined by saxophone?) and fascinating facts. Exploring 24 great films too painful to watch twice, 14 tragic movie-masturbation scenes, 18 songs about crappy cities, and much more, Inventory combines a massive helping of new lists created especially for the book with a few favorites first seen at avclub.com and in the pages of The A.V. Club's sister publication, The Onion. But wait! There's more: John Hodgman offers a set of minutely detailed (and probably fictional) character actors. Patton Oswalt waxes ecstatic about the "quiet film revolutions" that changed cinema in small but exciting ways. Amy Sedaris lists 50 things that make her laugh. "Weird Al" Yankovic examines the noises of Mad magazine's Don Martin. Plus lists from Paul Thomas Anderson, Robert Ben Garant, Tom Lennon, Andrew W.K., Tim and Eric, Daniel Handler, and Zach Galifianakis -- and an epic foreword from essayist Chuck Klosterman.

    Music for Silenced Voices looks at Shostakovich through the back door, as it were, of his fifteen quartets, the works which his widow characterized as a "diary, the story of his soul." The silences and the voices were of many kinds, including the political silencing of adventurous writers, artists, and musicians during the Stalin era; the lost voices of Shostakovich's operas (a form he abandoned just before turning to string quartets); and the death-silenced voices of his close friends, to whom he dedicated many of these chamber works.Wendy Lesser has constructed a fascinating narrative in which the fifteen quartets, considered one at a time in chronological order, lead the reader through the personal, political, and professional events that shaped Shostakovich's singular, emblematic twentieth-century life. Weaving together interviews with the composer's friends, family, and colleagues, as well as conversations with present-day musicians who have played the quartets, Lesser sheds new light on the man and the musician. One of the very few books about Shostakovich that is aimed at a general rather than an academic audience, Music for Silenced Voices is a pleasure to read; at the same time, it is rigorously faithful to the known facts in this notoriously complicated life. It will fill readers with the desire to hear the quartets, which are among the most compelling and emotionally powerful monuments of the past century's music.

    Wright Thompson, many times included in this volume over the years, takes his turn at the helm by curating this exceptional collection. The only shared trait among these diverse pieces is the extraordinarily high caliber of writing, but collectively they tap into the pure passion that can only come from sports. And for all aspiring sports writers, says Thompson, “these selections are both road map and compass.”  The Best American Sports Writing 2015 includesDon Van Natta Jr., Chris Ballard, Katie Baker, Christopher Beam, Wells Tower, Seth Wickersham, Ariel Levyand others WRIGHT THOMPSON, guest editor, started his sports writing career as a student at the University of Missouri, where he covered sports for the Columbia Missourian. He interned at the Times-Picayune in New Orleans and worked as the LSU beat writer. He then moved to the Kansas City Star, where he covered a wide variety of sports. In 2006 he joined ESPN.com and ESPN: The Magazine as a senior writer. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi. GLENN STOUT, series editor for The Best American Sports Writing since its inception, is the author of Young Woman and the Sea and Fenway 1912. He serves as the long-form editor for SB Nation and lives in Alburgh, Vermont.

    His anatomy of the word cool reminds us that, in the postwar 40s, it was infused with the feeling of jazz music but is now merely a synonym for neat. "On Celestial Music," which was included in Best American Essays, 2008, begins with a lament for the loss in recent music of the vulnerability expressed by Otis Redding's masterpiece, "Try a Little Tenderness;" moves on to Moody's infatuation with the ecstatic music of the Velvet Underground; and ends with an appreciation of Arvo Part and Purcell, close as they are to nature, "the music of the spheres."Contemporary groups covered include Magnetic Fields (their love songs), Wilco (the band's and Jeff Tweedy's evolution), Danielson Famile (an evangelical rock band), The Pogues (Shane McGowan's problems with addiction), The Lounge Lizards (John Lurie's brilliance), and Meredith Monk, who once recorded a song inspired by Rick Moody's story "Boys." Always both incisive and personable, these pieces inspire us to dive as deeply into the music that enhances our lives as Moody has done--and introduces us to wonderful sounds we may not know.~from back cover

    Edited by Silvia Killingsworth and renowned chef and author Gabrielle Hamilton. “A year that stopped our food world in its tracks,” writes Gabrielle Hamilton in her introduction, reflecting on 2020. The stories in this edition of Best American Food Writing create a stunning portrait of a year that shook the food industry, reminding us of how important restaurants, grocery stores, shelters, and those who work in them are in our lives. From the Sikhs who fed thousands during the pandemic, to the writer who was quarantined with her Michelin-starred chef boyfriend, to the restaurants that served $200-per-person tasting menus to the wealthy as the death toll soared, this superb collection captures the underexposed ills of the industry and the unending power of food to unite us, especially when we need it most. THE BEST AMERICAN FOOD WRITING 2021 INCLUDES • BILL BUFORD • RUBY TANDOH • PRIYA KRISHNA • LIZA MONROY • NAVNEET ALANG • KELSEY MILLER HELEN ROSNER • LIGAYA MISHAN and others

    Christopher Hitchens continues to make the case for a splendidly godless universe in this first-ever gathering of the influential voices--past and present--that have shaped his side of the current (and raging) God/no-god debate. With Hitchens as your erudite and witty guide, you'll be led through a wealth of philosophy, literature, and scientific inquiry, including generous portions of the words of Lucretius, Benedict de Spinoza, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Mark Twain, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Emma Goldman, H. L. Mencken, Albert Einstein, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and many others well-known and lesser known. And they're all set in context and commented upon as only Christopher Hitchens political and literary journalist extraordinaire can.” (Los Angeles Times) Atheist? Believer? Uncertain? No matter: The Portable Atheist will speak to you and engage you every step of the way.

    Guest editor David Maraniss, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, has assembled a fresh crop of the people and stories that dominated the sports world in 2006.Michael Lewis gives a behind-the-scenes look at the legendary football coach Bill Parcells. Bob Hohler delves in the murky waters of modern amateur basketball, where teams blatantly dole out cash to players and shoe companies set their sights on prospects as young as twelve. William Rhoden traces the fate of an unknown filly injured on the racetrack. Jeff MacGregor describes the unforgettable Friars Club roast of boxing's provocative promoter Don King. Daniel Coyle follows a forty-year-old Slovene soldier who might be the world’s best ultra-endurance athlete. L. Jon Wertheim tells of a young pro-basketball player who found himself wrestling the shoe bomber Richard Reid to the ground during a transatlantic flight. And Derek Zumsteg provides a hilarious and utterly original in-depth account of the baseball career of Bugs Bunny, “the greatest banned player ever.”These pieces and many more go beyond the spotlight, revealing the people and issues that make sports so relevant and important to all of us.The white coon / Larry Brown --Bugs Bunny, greatest banned player ever / Derek Zumsteg --Ready for some fútbol? / Oscar Casares --The game of the year / Chris Ballard --Filling in the pieces of Jake Scott / Dave Hyde --Fading away / Wright Thompson --Deal of the century / John Klima --An unknown filly dies, and the crowd just shrugs / William C. Rhoden --Let us now raze famous men / Jeff MacGregor --Only medal for Bode is fool's gold / Sally Jenkins --That which does not kill me makes me stranger / Daniel Coyle --Polite when in neutral / Mimi Swartz --Snook / Ian Frazier --Blank Monday / William Finnegan --What keeps Bill Parcells awake at night / Michael Lewis --The madness of John Chaney / Robert Huber --The real deal in so many ways / Michael Wilbon --$neaker war / Bob Hohler --Baseball for life / Sara Corbett --A new game plan / Eli Saslow --The Saturday game / Eric Neel --Playing 4 keeps / Bryan Smith --The ultimate assist / L. Jon Wertheim --In Iraq, soccer field is no longer a refuge / Bruce Wallace --A moment of silence / Steve Friedman --Team Hoyt starts again / John Brant --The big show by little people / Paul Cullum --Talking turkey / Bill Buford

    This year’s volume of travel writing . . . focuses mostly on the latter with derring-do dispatches.” — USA TodayA far-ranging collection of the best travel writing pieces published in 2013, collected by guest editor Paul Theroux. The Best American Travel Writing consistently includes a wide variety of pieces, illuminating the wonder, humor, fear, and exhilaration that greets all of us when we embark on a journey to a new place. Readers know that there is simply no other option when they want great travel writing.

    Over more than four decades, he built a reputation writing reviews for the Chicago Sun-Times and, later, arguing onscreen with rival Chicago Tribune critic Gene Siskel and later Richard Roeper about the movies they loved and loathed. But Ebert went well beyond a mere “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” Readers could always sense the man behind the words, a man with interests beyond film and a lifetime’s distilled wisdom about the larger world. Although the world lost one of its most important critics far too early, Ebert lives on in the minds of moviegoers today, who continually find themselves debating what he might have thought about a current movie.The Great Movies IV is the fourth—and final—collection of Roger Ebert’s essays, comprising sixty-two reviews of films ranging from the silent era to the recent past. From films like The Cabinet of Caligari and Viridiana that have been considered canonical for decades to movies only recently recognized as masterpieces to Superman, The Big Lebowski, and Pink Floyd: The Wall, the pieces gathered here demonstrate the critical acumen seen in Ebert’s daily reviews and the more reflective and wide-ranging considerations that the longer format allowed him to offer. Ebert’s essays are joined here by an insightful foreword by film critic Matt Zoller Seitz, the current editor-in-chief of the official Roger Ebert website, and a touching introduction by Chaz Ebert. A fitting capstone to a truly remarkable career, The Great Movies IV will introduce newcomers to some of the most exceptional movies ever made, while revealing new insights to connoisseurs as well.

    BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING gathers together a satisfyingly varied medley of perspectives, all exploring what it means to travel somewhere new. For the past two decades, readers have come to recognize this annual volume as the gold standard for excellence in travel writing.Overlooking Guantanamo / Benz, Stephen --The Great Divide / Crowell, Maddy --Uncomfortable Silences: a walk in Myanmar / Fettling, David --Finished / Gregory, Alice --How the Chile Pepper took over the world / Gross, Matt --I walked from Selma to Montgomery / Haile, Rahawa --Morsi the Cat / Hessler, Peter --A visit to Chernobyl:Travel in the Postapocalypse / Hewitt, Cameron --Paper Tiger / Jarvis, Brooke --Keepers of the Jungle / Knafo, Saki --Mother Tongue / Loredo, Lucas --Is this the most crowded island in the world? (and why that question matters) / MacGregor, Alex --Taming the Lionfish / MacGregor, Jeff --If these walls could talk / Markham, Lauren --The floating world / Mauk, Ben --Irmageddon / O'Neil, Devon --Water and the wall / Paumgarten, Nick --How Nashville became one big bachelorette party / Petersen, Anne Helen --These Brazilians traveled 18 hours on a riverboat to vote. I went with them / Sims, Shannon --Cursed fields / Sneider, Noah --The end of the line / Vollmann, William T. --"The Greatest" / Wilson, Jason --Tributary / Yen, Jessica --Tourist Trap / Zha, Jianying