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Pop Literacy

Dec 21, 2021

The new novel Dava Shastri’s Last Day by Kirthana Ramisetti tells the story of an aging music mogul who plans her own assisted death after a devastating cancer diagnosis—but decides to let news of her passing leak a little early so she can read what she assumes will be her glowing obituaries. Instead, she witnesses...


Dec 7, 2021

From radios to records and teens with allowances to teens with part-time jobs, the history of the American concert began in earnest with technological and cultural changes after World War II. That history may be shorter than a lot of music fans think. Rock journalist and author Marc Myers recalls that timeline in...


Nov 9, 2021

It’s hard to imagine a time when Samuel L. Jackson wasn’t the unassailable pinnacle of Hollywood cool, but cool is made, not born. And that’s where Gavin Edwards’ new biography of the actor, Bad Motherfucker, comes in. Edwards charts Jackson’s rise from his southern upbringing to his radicalization at...


Oct 26, 2021

Decades before it came under Disney control, 20th Century Fox was one of the most respected, innovative movie studios in Hollywood, under the leadership of legendary, complicated, producer Darryl F. Zanuck. The bad: he was a notorious and habitual user of the casting couch, and he was certainly never mistaken as one...


Oct 12, 2021

Lynette Rice has covered Grey’s Anatomy from the beginning: as it became a culture-defining phenomenon in the 2000s, as it faced cast meltdowns and blowups, as it cycled through stars, as it killed off McDreamy, and as it aged into an old reliable in an otherwise uncertain network television landscape (18 seasons and...