Celebrated Japanese crime writer Natsuo Kirino made her American debut in 2005, when the novel Out was translated into English, and became a finalist for an Edgar award.
Out told the weird story of an abused wife who strangles her husband and then seeks the aid of her coworkers in a boxed lunch factory in covering up the murder. The novel was a sensation not simply because it lured American readers out of the tourist precincts of Japan, but because of its distinctive worldview and tone.
Another Kirino novel, Grotesque, has just been translated into English.
Record producer Joe Boyd has worked with Eric Clapton, Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Richard and Linda Thompson, R.E.M. and many other musical acts. He has a new memoir, called White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s.
Shes up for an academy award for her portrayal of the mother of a drug addict who is also an addict herself in the film –Requiem for a Dream.— This is her 5th nomination and could be her second win. She won the Academy Award for the 1974 film –Alice Doesnt Live Here Anymore.— Burstyns other films include –The Last Picture Show,— –The Exorcist,— and –Same Time, Next Year— (she starred in the Broadway version too and won a Tony).
Ramos is considered a pioneer of Tejano music, the sound known for its traditional Mexican roots infused with the big-band sound of the 1940s, and heavily influenced by blues and rock. He is the bandleader of Ruben and the Texas Revolution. Their most recent recording is –El Gato Negro: A Class Act—. Hes also part of the all-star band Los Super Seven which has a new CD –Canto—
Blackwater USA is a secretive private army based in North Carolina with a sole owner: Erik Prince, a right-wing Christian multimillionaire. Jeremy Scahill talks about his book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.
In the year 2000, a civilian employee of the U.S. military in Seoul, South Korea, ordered a Korean subordinate to dump a large amount of formaldehyde into a sewer pipe leading to the Han River. The incident aroused violent anti-American sentiment in Korea, and led to the birth of a monster — a monster movie, called The Host.
Actress Betty Hutton died last weekend at the age of 86. Hutton was a singer and actress who starred in classic musicals and comedies of the 1940s and 1950s.
Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has an upcoming PBS documentary series that tells the story of the World War II through the eyes of the soldiers who fought in it.
Simply called The War, the 14-hour, seven-part series begins airing in September.
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain. The new movie Amazing Grace is about the British abolitionist movement, focusing on the man who led the fight in Parliament. It's a story that can lead to introspection.
LCD Soundsystem is a band that exists primarily in the recording studio, with singer-writer-producer James Murphy playing most of the instruments.
When LCD Soundsystem performs live, he usually assembles a four-piece band that can reproduce the kind of dance-punk-electronica mixture that won the band's previous album a Grammy nomination in 2005.
LCD Soundsystem's new album, called Sound of Silver, broadens the project's sound to make Murphy's rhythms even more accessible.
Religion scholars Elaine Pagels and Karen King's new book, Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity, interprets and translates the recently discovered gnostic gospel of Judas.
Pagels' previous books include, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas and The Gnostic Gospels.
King's previous book is The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle.
Dr. Jerome Groopman, a staff writer at The New Yorker, has written a book about how doctors make decisions regarding their patients. It's called How Doctors Think.
Groopman is chief of experimental medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and teaches at Harvard Medical School.
Retired CIA field officer Larry Devlin was appointed CIA station chief in Zaire in the Congo in 1960, following the Congo's independence from Belgium. It was also a time when the Congo was a significant pawn in the Cold War.
Devlin has written a memoir about his experiences, Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone.
Journalist Jeffrey Rosen is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine. His article titled "The Brain on the Stand: How neuroscience is transforming the legal system" appeared in the March 11 issue.
It's about an emerging field of study called "neurolaw," which combines neuroscience and the law. He writes about how evidence from brain-scanning technologies are being used in the courtroom to explain away criminal behavior.
Journalists Lisa Chedekel and Matthew Kauffman of The Hartford Courant have been awarded the George Polk Award for their series from May on flaws in the military's mental health system: Mentally Unfit, Forced to Fight.
Author Jonathan Lethem. His new novel is âYou Donât Love Me Yetâ (Doubleday). He is also the author of the semi-autobiographical novel, "The Fortress of Solitude" (Doubleday 2003) about a white kid growing up in an African-American and Latino neighborhood in New York. His novel, "Motherless Brooklyn" (Doubleday 1999) won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. His other books include "Girl in Landscape" (Doubleday 1998) and "Amnesia Moon" (Harcourt 1995).
