Prisoners

In Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's new film, Caesar Must Die, a group of prisoners put on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. It's barely an hour and a quarter, and it's physically small-scale, but it's so compressed it wears you out -- in a good way.

Music by blues singer and guitarist Robert Pete Williams has just been reissued. Williams, like Leadbelly, was a convicted murderer who sang his way out of prison. Commentator Milo Miles has this review.

Kurt Vonnegut's new novel is set in 2001 in a radically reconfigured America. The complex, self-referential plot reveals unique insights into the United State's past, says book critic John Leonard. It's Vonnegut's best book in years.