Elliot Smith - In this 224-page hardcover book, friend and photographer Autumn De Wilde's collection of personal Smith photographs is augmented with ephemera, handwritten lyrics, and revealing conversations with Beck, Chris Walla, Mark Lanegan and other members of Smith's inner circle. [11.28.2007]

Drunk By Noon - The really lovely moments of Jennifer L. Knox's poems are often hidden away, poignant and touching lines wrapped up in bizarre scenarios which most people would probably never think of, moments of impossibility, or mundane instances too often ignored as the everyday. [09.28.2007]

Beowulf: A New Verse Translation - There are more than 20 translations of this Old English epic into modern English, but the new Whitbread Prize-winning translation by Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet and Nobel laureate, stands out as one of the most remarkable among them. [09.04.2007]

Operation Supergoose - William Hart's attempt to expose the second Bush administration's questionable take on foreign policy, a challenge undertaken with larger than life strokes, feels like getting hit over the head with a novelty-sized paintbrush--that is, if one hadn't already had to endure it for months in the form of cable news network chatter and local op-ed pieces, both now a distinctive shade of blue. [08.30.2007]

Travels With Herodotus - A moral element is woven through the memoirs of Ryszard Kapuściński, but what is amazing about the work is that its moral element comes from unasked questions that, where other authors are or would feel to naïve to do so, Kapuściński does not hesitate to posit. [08.06.2007]

The Children of Húrin - Unfolding during the waning days of the First Age, some six thousand years before the events of The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien's "new" book, was begun in 1918 and revised several times, but never finished until last year when Tolkien's son, Christopher, completed the tale. [06.07.2007 by Eric J. Morgan]