In December 2010, an NPR Staff writer wrote, “How Hip0Hop Became a Cash Machine” for the show, All Things Considered. Thirty years ago, hip-hop was background noise at small house parties in Harlem and the South Bronx. Now, it's a multibillion-dollar empire. A new book, The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop, tells the story of the genre's humble beginnings — from one person behind a few turntables and a microphone — and how it morphed into a way of life, with designer clothing lines, political movements and vast wealth. But in the early days of rap, a lot of the money stayed with the label owners, not with the musicians. Charnas notes that some hip-hop dignitaries railed against "how onerous recording contracts were and how tilted the relationship was between artists and record companies."
“Sometime in the middle to the end of the last decade, BusinessWeek estimated that the hip-hop business had grown to, on the music side, about $1 billion a year, and on the fashion side, $2 billion a year.”
In December 2010, Jim Farber wrote “'The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop' by Dan Charnas follows the money” for the New York Daily News. The story of hip hop has been told from many points of view, but never from those who've had the strongest power over its destiny. That would be the corporate backers and entrepreneurial enablers, those market forces that finessed a street trend from New York's most embattled neighborhoods into a global phenomenon. Dan Charnas has done a real service to pop history by following the money -- a pursuit which ultimately tells a far larger tale: In hip hop, it seems, cash isn't just a matter of bling. It's the currency that gave this once outsider art -- and by extension, a marginalized race -- a louder, clearer and more important voice all over the world.
“I think Sugar Hill saw themselves as riding out a fad. I don't think they had any particular belief that this was a powerful culture that had staying power. We'd just come off of the disco era, which turned out to be very, very short-lived, and I'm sure that a lot of people, including Sylvia and Joe Robinson, thought that the same would happen to this rap stuff. The difference was that Russell Simmons did not like the records that Sugar Hill was turning out because they didn't sound to him like the hip-hop that lived in the streets and the parks and the clubs, which was very raw, very beat-oriented, and didn't sound like disco at all. And so Russell Simmons' key innovation, when he made Run-D.M.C.'s first record, was to basically order his producer-partner Larry Smith to take out all the music. 'I just want to hear a beat,' he said.”
From NPR's Morning Edition: You might say Nora Ephron — raised in Beverly Hills, the daughter of New York playwrights who moved west to write screenplays for the likes of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy — was born to tell stories. As an adult, Ephron worked as a journalist. Later she made her own name in the movies, writing When Harry Met Sally and directing scripts of her own — including Sleepless in Seattle and Julie & Julia. More recently, the 69-year-old Ephron has been sharing reflections on aging, first in her book I Feel Bad About My Neck and now in a new collection called I Remember Nothing. In the latter, Nora Ephron spins stories on a potpourri of subjects: divorce, disdain for egg-white omelets, and most especially memory loss. "I have been forgetting things for years – at least since I was in my 30s," Ephron writes in the book's opening paragraph. "I know this because I wrote something about it at the time; I have proof. Of course I can't remember exactly where I wrote about it or when, but I could probably hunt it up if I had to."
From Publishers Weekly: Reading these succinct, razor-sharp essays by veteran humorist (I Feel Bad About My Neck), novelist, and screenwriter-director Ephron is to be reminded that she cut her teeth as a New York Post writer in the 1960s, as she recounts in the most substantial selection here, "Journalism: A Love Story." Forthright, frequently wickedly backhanded, these essays cover the gamut of later-life observations (she is 69), from the dourly hilarious title essay about losing her memory, which asserts that her ubiquitous senior moment has now become the requisite Google moment, to several flimsy lists, such as "Twenty-five Things People Have a Shocking Capacity to Be Surprised by Over and Over Again," e.g., "Movies have no political effect whatsoever." Shorts such as the several "I Just Want to Say" pieces feature Ephron's trademark prickly contrariness and are stylistically digestible for the tabloids. Other essays delve into memories of fascinating people she knew, such as the Lillian Hellman of Pentimento, whom she adored until the older woman's egomania rubbed her the wrong way. Most winning, however, are her priceless reflections on her early life, such as growing up in Beverly Hills with her movie-people parents, and how being divorced shaped the bulk of her life, in "The D Word." There's an elegiac quality to many of these pieces, handled with wit and tenderness.
From The New York Times: Nora Ephron worries about a failing memory in the title piece of “I Remember Nothing,” her inviting new collection of essays. But even her most amnesiac readers still remember “I Feel Bad About My Neck,” the 2006 collection that this new book closely resembles. That resemblance is helpful in some ways and alarming in others. Each of these books is 137 pages long. Their covers are similarly formatted, with the same font used for the author’s name. One of Nora Ephron's back-cover portraits was taken by someone named Elena, the other by someone named Ilona; either way, Ms. Ephron looks attractive, accessible and well worth listening to. Her repackaged aperçus are now $3 more expensive than they were four years ago. She is now 69, not 65, and her sense of creeping mortality has changed accordingly. But the most salient comparisons are those between the lengths and origins of each book’s articles. “I Feel Bad About My Neck” had 15 entries, most of them tight, beguiling, exemplary essays written for print magazines (O, Vogue, The New Yorker) and The New York Times. “I Remember Nothing” has 23 pieces, and most of them are much shorter and less shapely. Some sound like the hurried Huffington Post blog entries that they seemingly were. The single strangest inclusion is a one-paragraph item titled “I Just Want to Say: Chicken Soup” and asks whether chicken soup creates colds instead of curing them. This is the inexplicably truncated lead paragraph of a much longer Op-Ed article from The Times headlined “The Chicken Soup Chronicles.” And all it amounts to is the wry, five-sentence version of a one-liner.
Nora Ephron (born May 19, 1941) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, novelist, journalist, author, and blogger. She is best known for her romantic comedies and is a triple nominee for the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay; for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally... and Sleepless in Seattle. She sometimes writes with her sister Delia Ephron. Her most recent film is Julie & Julia. Ephron graduated from Wellesley College in 1962 and worked briefly as an intern in the White House of President John F. Kennedy.
After a satire Nora Ephron wrote lampooning the Post caught the editor's eye, the author landed a job at the New York Post, where she stayed as a reporter for five years. In 1966, Ephron broke the news in the Post that Bob Dylan had married Sara Lownds in a private ceremony three and a half months before. Upon becoming a successful writer, she wrote a column on women's issues for Esquire. In this position, Ephron made a name for herself by taking on subjects as wide-ranging as Dorothy Schiff, her former boss and owner of the Post; Betty Friedan, whom she chastised for pursuing a feud with Gloria Steinem; and her alma mater Wellesley, which she said had turned out a generation of "docile" women." A 1968 send-up of Women's Wear Daily in Cosmopolitan resulted in threats of a lawsuit from WWD. While married to Bernstein in the mid-1970s, at her husband and Bob Woodward's request, she helped Bernstein re-write William Goldman's script for All the President's Men, because the two journalists were not happy with it. The Ephron-Bernstein script was not used in the end, but was seen by someone who offered Ephron her first screenwriting job, for a television movie. Ephron's 2002 play Imaginary Friends explores the rivalry between writers Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy.
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (P.S.) is a 2005 non-fiction book by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner. The book has been described as melding pop culture with economics, but has also been decried as "amateur sociology." By late 2009, it had sold over 4 million copies worldwide. The book is a collection of 'economic' articles written by Levitt, an expert who has already gained a reputation for applying economic theory to diverse subjects not usually covered by "traditional" economists; he does, however, accept the standard neoclassical microeconomic model of rational utility-maximization. In Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner argue that economics is, at root, the study of incentives.
One example of the Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner's use of economic theory in Freakonomics involves demonstrating the existence of cheating among sumo wrestlers. In a sumo tournament, all wrestlers in the top division compete in 15 matches and face demotion if they do not win at least eight of them. The sumo community is very close-knit, and the wrestlers at the top levels tend to know each other well. The authors looked at the final match, and considered the case of a wrestler with seven wins, seven losses, and one fight to go, fighting against an 8-6 wrestler. Statistically, the 7-7 wrestler should have a slightly below even chance, since the 8-6 wrestler is slightly better. However, the 7-7 wrestler actually wins around 80% of the time. Levitt uses this statistic and other data gleaned from sumo wrestling matches, along with the effect that allegations of corruption have on match results, to conclude that those who already have 8 wins collude with those who are 7-7 and let them win, since they have already secured their position for the following tournament. The authors attempt to demonstrate the power of data mining. Many of their results emerge from Levitt's analysis of various databases, and asking the right questions. Authors posit that various incentives encourage teachers to cheat by assisting their students with multiple-choice high-stakes tests. Such cheating in the Chicago school system is inferred from detailed analysis of students' answers to multiple choice questions. But first Levitt asks, "What would the pattern of answers look like if the teacher cheated?" The simple answer: difficult questions at the end of a section will be more correct than easy ones at the beginning.
Reappraisals: In Chapter 2 of Freakonomics, the authors wrote of their visit to folklorist Stetson Kennedy's Florida home where the topic of Kennedy's investigations of the Ku Klux Klan were discussed. However, in their January 8, 2006 column in the New York Times Magazine, Dubner and Levitt wrote of questions about Stetson Kennedy's research ("Hoodwinked" pp 26-28) leading to the conclusion that Kennedy's research was at times embellished for effectiveness. In the "Revised and Expanded Edition" this embellishment was noted and corrected: "Several months after Freakonomics was first published, it was brought to our attention that this man's portrayal of his crusade, and various other Klan matters, was considerably overstated....we felt it was important to set straight the historical record."
Criticism: Freakonomics has been criticised for being a work of sociology and criminology, rather than economics. Israeli economist Ariel Rubinstein criticised the book for making use of dubious statistics and complained that "economists like Levitt ... have swaggered off into other fields", saying that the "connection to economics ... [is] none" and that the book is an example of "academic imperialism". Arnold Kling has suggested the book is an example of "amateur sociology".
Publishing history: Freakonomics peaked at number two among nonfiction on The New York Times Best Seller list and was named the 2006 Book Sense Book of the Year in the Adult Nonfiction category. The book received positive reviews from critics. The review aggregator Metacritic reported the book had an average score of 67 out of 100, based on 16 reviews. The success of the book has been partly attributed to the blogosphere. In the campaign prior to the release of the book in April 2005, the publisher (William Morrow and Company) chose to target bloggers in an unusually strategical way, sending galley copies to over a hundred of them, as well as contracting two specialized word of mouth (buzz marketing) agencies. In 2006, the Revised and Expanded Edition of the book was published, with the most significant corrections in the second chapter.
Freakonomics blog: The authors started their own Freakonomics blog, which is "meant to keep the conversation going", in 2005. In May 2007, writer and blogger Melissa Lafsky was hired as the full time editor of the site. In August 2007, the blog was incorporated into The New York Times' web site – the authors had been writing joint columns for The New York Times Magazine since 2004 – and the domain Freakonomics.com became a redirect there. In March 2008, Annika Mengisen replaced Lafsky as the blog editor. Among the recurrent guest bloggers on the Freakonomics blog are Ian Ayres, Daniel Hamermesh, Eric A. Morris, Sudhir Venkatesh, Justin Wolfers and others.
Film adaptation: In 2010, Chad Troutwine, Chris Romano, and Dan O'Meara produced a documentary film adaptation with a budget of nearly $3 million in an omnibus format by directors Seth Gordon, Morgan Spurlock, Alex Gibney, Eugene Jarecki, Rachel Grady, and Heidi Ewing. It was the Closing Night Gala premiere film at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 30, 2010. It was also the Opening Night film at the AFI/Discovery SilverDocs film festival on June 21, 2010. Magnolia Pictures has acquired distribution rights for a Fall 2010 release.
From Time Magazine: For Justin Halpern, going home was his lucky break. A year ago, Halpern was a 28-year-old writer who after splitting up with his girlfriend swallowed his pride and moved back in with Mom and Dad. Now he has more than 1.3 million followers on Twitter, a best-selling book and a TV series in the works with CBS, all thanks to his now 74-year-old hilariously blunt dad. It all started with this tweet on Aug. 3, 2009: "I didn't live to be 73-years-old so I could eat kale. Don't fix me your breakfast and pretend you're fixing mine." Halpern took his ridiculously popular Twitter feed and turned it into a book by the same name, which debuted at No. 8 on the New York Times best-seller list. Halpern, author of the crudely titled Sh*t My Dad Says, spoke to TIME about William Shatner playing his father on TV, his whirlwind year and, of course, dear old Dad.
Justin Samuel Halpern (born September 3, 1980) is the American author of the Twitter feed and best-selling book Shit My Dad Says. He is also the co-writer and co-executive producer of a CBS television situation comedy series based on the book. Justin Halpern grew up in the Point Loma neighborhood of San Diego, California. His father is Jewish and his Italian American mother is Catholic. His father, Samuel Halpern, M.D., is a radiologist, now retired, who practiced at the University of California San Diego. A blunt-spoken man, he gave memorable, expletive-laden advice and comments to young Justin from childhood on. Samuel Halpern has been described as "a profane comic genius," "Lenny Bruce with a stethoscope," "a scatological Socrates showering rough wisdom on his son."
Justin Halpern graduated from San Diego State University in 2003. He then headed for Hollywood looking for work as a writer. He wrote screenplays and waited tables, but success as a screenwriter eluded him. By 2009 he was a full-time writer for Maxim Magazine's online site and no longer needed to live in Los Angeles. He moved back to San Diego and wound up living with his parents. Justin Halpern had always kept a record of his father’s salty comments. Some, repeated to him by brothers, cousins and other relatives, go back to when he was 4 or 5 years old. When he started living with his parents, his record of his father’s remarks became a daily journal. On August 3, 2009, he started a Twitter feed, @shitmydadsays, just to have a place to store his father’s rhetorical gems. He thought he might use some of them someday in a script. On the Twitter site he explains, "I'm 29. I live with my 74-year-old dad. He is awesome. I just write down shit that he says." To his surprise he quickly gathered a large following on Twitter. A friend posted a link to his feed, then Rob Corddry tweeted it, and "that really jump-started it" according to Halpern. By mid-August he had more than 100,000 followers. By October he had a book deal with Harper Collins, and by November he had a television deal with Warner Bros. As of November 2010 his Twitter feed had more than 1.8 million followers.
Shawn Corey Carter (born December 4, 1969), better known by his stage name Jay-Z, is an American rapper and businessperson. He is one of the most financially successful hip-hop artists and entrepreneurs in America having had a net worth of over $450 million in 2010. He has sold approximately 50 million albums worldwide, while receiving ten Grammy Awards for his musical work, and numerous additional nominations. Jay-Z co-owns The 40/40 Club, is part owner of the NBA's New Jersey Nets and is the creator of the clothing line Rocawear. He is the former CEO of Def Jam Recordings, one of the three founders of Roc-A-Fella Records, and the founder of Roc Nation. As an artist, he holds the record for most number one albums by a solo artist on the Billboard 200. Jay-Z also has had four number ones on the Billboard Hot 100, one as lead artist. Along with his financial and musical success, Jay-Z is known for quarreling with other artists in the rap industry, the most famous feud being between him and fellow New York rapper Nas, which was eventually settled in 2005. He married American R&B superstar Beyoncé Knowles on April 4, 2008. On December 11, 2009, Jay-Z was ranked as the 10th most successful artist of the 2000–2009 decade by Billboard Magazine and ranking as the 5th top solo male artist and as the 4th top rapper behind Eminem, Nelly, and 50 Cent. Source: Wikipedia.
Excerpt (Jay-Z on Bono): The writer had asked me about the U2 record that was about to be released and I said something about the kind of pressure a group like that must be under just to meet their own standard. Bono told me that my quote had really gotten to him. In fact, he said it got him a little anxious. He decided to go back to the studio even though the album was already done and keep reworking it till he thought it was as good as it could possibly be.
Excerpt (Jay-Z on assault charges): People kept giving me the same name as the source of the bootlegging. It was someone I knew, someone I never would have suspected. One night I went to Q-Tip's solo album release party and at some point in the night, I ran into the guy everyone's been telling me is behind the bootleg. So I approached him. When I told him what I suspected, to my surprise, he got real loud with me right there in the middle of the club. It was strange. We separated and I went over to the bar. I was sitting there like, 'No the f--- this n---a did not ... " I was talking to people, but I was really talking to myself out loud, just in a state of shock. Before I even realized what I was doing, I headed back over to him, but this time I was blacking out with anger. The next thing I knew, all hell had broken loose in the club. That night the guy went straight to the police and I was charged with assault.
NPR program Fresh Air with Terry Gross featured the author and book on its program in November, 2010. This is what was said on the feature story's webpage:
Long before he sold 50 million records worldwide — and before he appeared alongside Warren Buffett on the cover of Fortune magazine, accumulated 10 Grammy Awards and became the CEO of his own record label — Jay-Z was living with his mom in the Marcy Houses housing project in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, just trying to survive day by day. "It was a very intense and stressful situation," he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "There was playing in the Johnny-pump (an opened fire hydrant) and the ice-cream man coming around and all of these games that we'd play, and suddenly it would turn just violent and there would be shootings at 12 in the afternoon on any given day. It was a weird mix of emotions. One day, your best friend could be killed. The day before, you could be celebrating him getting a brand-new bike." Now 40, Jay-Z hasn't forgotten his past — or the lyrics he's written over the years about his childhood in the projects. In his new book, Decoded, he unpacks the detailed riffs and lyrics that make up 36 of his songs — while examining both his own life and the growth of hip-hop over the last two decades.
Joseph Smith, Jr., first leader
of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons)
The White Horse Prophecy is a statement purported to have been made in 1843 by Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, regarding the future of the Latter Day Saints Mormons and the United States of America. The Latter Day Saints, according to the prophecy, would “go to the Rocky Mountains and ... be a great and mighty people,” identified figuratively with the White Horse described in the Revelation of John. The prophecy further predicts that the United States Constitution will one day “hang like a thread” and will be saved “by the efforts of the White Horse.”
“I heard Barack Obama talk about the Constitution and I thought, we are at the point or we are very near the point where our Constitution is hanging by a thread.”
- Glenn Beck
“I think that Glenn Beck is dangerous. The Anti-Defamation League has said basically, what he has done is he has taken ideas that are on the fringes of the Internet. You know, some of it is far right, talk of Nazis and fascists, the notion that FEMA may be operating concentration camps in Wyoming. And you never want to blame a television personality for some crazy thing that one of his followers do. But there are a lot of people out there who said they believe Beck is giving them a nod and a wink, that it is time to bring violence. And Beck will say, he will say -- he will talk about bullets in the brain. He will talk about fascists; he will talk about secession, a lot violent talk -- always qualified like we want a peaceful resolution to this. But he also says things like, “I want you to hear what I am saying in between the sentences. There may be a time when I’m not able to say what I want to, but hear me screaming to you in between the sentences.” So this, of course, is an invitation to the conspiracy theorists who indeed have cited Beck.”
In March 2010, Joanna Brooks, renowned Mormon scholar and writer, wrote “Glenn Beck Doesn't Speak For The Mormons I Know” for the Huffington Post. This morning at 6 a.m., I received an urgent call from a Presbyterian friend in Atlanta, Georgia. She wanted me to know that Glenn Beck threatened progressive evangelical Christian pastor Jim Wallis during his television and radio broadcasts. "He's gone too far," my Presbyterian friend said. “The only thing that's going to come of this is that Christians in the South will dislike Mormonism even more.” Glenn Beck is a Mormon.
Glenn Beck's progressive
"Tree of Revolution" chalk board
So am I. During the nineteenth century, my Mormon ancestors crossed the plains to live their faith without fear of attack from the mobs that had hounded them out of Missouri and Illinois. Watching Glenn Beck threaten to "bring the hammer down" on another person of faith makes my stomach turn. I could cite a host of scriptures from the Bible and the Book of Mormon about how Beck's attack on Jim Wallis is not in keeping with faith-based values. Suffice it to say, Glenn Beck does not speak for the Mormons I know. Most Mormons I know have quite a bit in common with Reverend Jim Wallis, who has dedicated a life and a career to the service of others. By contrast, Glenn Beck has devoted his life and career to expanding the media footprint of Glenn Beck. He's done whatever it's taken: from cavorting with chimpanzees as a "morning zoo" shock jock to threatening to "bring the hammer down" on people of good will like Jim Wallis. Who knows what kind of ugliness Glenn Beck will trot out when he "brings the hammer down" on Jim Wallis next week. As a Mormon woman, I agree with my Presbyterian friend in Atlanta: Beck has gone too far.
“I don’t want to live like this... Republic’s at stake! ... They’re telling you lies... Don’t you want to live in the country that we thought we lived in? [Beck starts to cry.] I have been a lonely voice for a very long time, and no longer! You can do whatever the hell you want with me. You will replace me.”
- Glenn Beck at a show in Norfolk, Virginia
“The hammer is coming, because little do you know, for eight weeks, we've been compiling information on you, your cute little organization, and all the other cute little people that are with you. And when the hammer comes, it's going to be hammering hard and all through the night, over and over!”
- Glenn Beck
In October 2010, David Oshinsky wrote a review of the Dana Milbank book for The Statesman. The book's title, Tears of a Clown, is also its hypothesis. Beck cries a lot in public. He can't help himself. He's just an emotional guy who loves his country too darned much to keep things bottled up inside. He cries about his family, and your family, and the daily perils we all face. He cries one day because America's on the brink of becoming Nazi Germany, the next day because it's morphing into Stalinist Russia, the following day because it's behaving suspiciously like (we've hit rock bottom here) France. "On this sea of tears," says Milbank, "Beck's boat has floated to the top of cable news and talk radio, and put him at the head of a mass anti-government conservative movement."
“I signed up for the elite membership on GlennBeck.com. I think he has a lower bar, and commercially, it’s pure genius. He has found the absolute sweet spot in the market right now.”
“Watching the shtick of the forty-six-year-old recovering alcoholic and cocaine addict, typical Beck viewers probably have no idea he is introducing them to some of the most controversial fields of Mormon theology, such as the White Horse Prophecy, which envisions the Latter-day Saints rescuing the U.S. Constitution.”
In October 2010, Ed Pilkington wrote “Glenn Beck under fire from Dana Milbank for gold-digging” for The Guardian. Glenn Beck, Fox News's Tea Party pundit-in-chief, has made his name by pouring vitriol on progressives and liberals who he accuses of trying to destroy America. Now he's being subjected to a taste of his own medicine. Dana Milbank, a Washington Post columnist, publishes today a 261-page invective against Beck which is just as caustic and sharply-worded as his subject's televised monologues, with the important distinction that Milbank's account is factually accurate. Chapter 7 of Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America, looks at how Beck, who likes to present himself to his viewers as a regular schmo, has amassed an empire with an annual turnover of $32 million. One route to his largesse, Milbank tells us, is his relentless plugging of gold which he tells his listeners and viewers is a sure-fire way for them to protect their savings amid economic collapse. "Conveniently, enough," he writes, "a top sponsor of Beck's radio, TV, and internet ventures is Goldine, a big gold dealer."
“Ultimately, only Beck knows if he actually believes the things he says on air. Given his background as a pro-choice, ponytail-wearing, drug-using DJ on morning radio, it’s tempting to think he invented the conservative persona, and found the ideology, to exploit a market opportunity. Anger and fear always grow in times of economic trouble—and Beck’s arrival at Fox News in early 2009 just after the American economy collapsed could not have been better timed. Yet even if Beck embraced the ideology for entirely commercial reasons, it’s entirely possible that, after playing the role for so long on radio and TV, he has internalized it.”
The book and author were recently the subject of a WHYY Radio program-episode of Fresh Air. On the webpage for the show, this was said about the book and subject:
In her new book Apollo's Angels, historian Jennifer Homans — a former professional ballet dancer herself — traces ballet's evolution over the past 400 years, and examines how changes in ballet parallel changing ideas about class structure, gender, costume, the ideal body and what the body can physically do. The book chronicles ballet's transition from the aristocratic courtier world in Europe through its place as a professional discipline in the Imperial Court of Russia, and finally as a technique performed on stages throughout the world. Ballet's origins, Homans explains, grew out of the Renaissance court cultures of Italy and France. Dancers would perform at the royal courts — and then invite the audience members to participate.
The Guardian recently said this about the author and book: Jennifer Homans's history of the art, culture and political context of ballet is like a beautiful painting in a slightly askew frame. She is a former dancer who trained at the School of American Ballet in New York, and was the wife of the historian Tony Judt, who died in August. She exchanged the stage for academia two decades ago but one can still tell from her prose the kind of dancer that she was: meticulous, devoted and, au fond, profoundly romantic.Read that Guardian review, here.
Wikipedia: The Black Mafia Family (BMF), was a drug trafficking organization originally based out of Detroit, Michigan. Started by the Flenory brothers Demetrius and Terry their organization began in the late 1980's; by the year 2000 they had established multi-kilogram cocaine distribution cells in cities throughout the United States. Through their Los Angeles-based drug source, they had direct links to Mexican-based drug cartels.[1] They established two main hubs for their operation; the Atlanta, Georgia hub was operated by older brother Demetrius, while the Los Angeles, California hub was operated by Terry. Around 2000, they began to try to legitimize and enter the Hip-Hop music scene, starting a company called BMF Entertainment. Through BMF Entertainment they helped promote a number of artists, including Young Jeezy, as well as BMF Entertainment's sole artists, Bleu DaVinci. Before their entrance into the music business, they were known to associate with a number of high-profile hip-hop artists, including Jay-Z, Fabolous, and Bun B. In 2005 the Drug Enforcement Administration indicted members of the Black Mafia Family; ultimately securing convictions of running a Continuing Criminal Enterprise against the Flenory brothers. Both would be sentenced to 30 years to life.[2] Subsequent indictments would eventually target over 150 members of the organization. Prosecutors would allege the organization made over $270 million over the course of the conspiracy.
Comedy Central recently said this, about Denis Leary's new book:
"Suck on this" is one of the most frequently used phrases in the English language, by everyone from paupers, kings, Pulitzer Prize winners and Celine Dion. Now Denis Leary is using it for the title of his new book, Suck on This Year, available wherever books are sold on Thursday, December 2 or for purchase here. But what else about this book? Good question, educated consumer. Here's what we know: Denis Leary jumps into the Twitter social networking revolution to help change the world we live in — to alert the masses and expose the facts about deceitful dictators and corrupt politicians — by gathering the truth and spreading it across the planet using the greatest weapon our democracy has to offer: jokes. Jokes, snarky asides and wise-ass banter. Disguised as tweets.
Leary is helping you LYFAO at 140 characters or less. Allow him to convince you further in the promotional video below and click past the jump for an exclusive outtake from Suck on This Year. Read your tweets in book form, you'll live longer.
The New York Times introduces Bill Carter's new book this way:
[In] his new book, “The War for Late Night,” Bill Carter, a television reporter for The New York Times, demonstrates that the flanking maneuvers made by crucial warriors on the late-night battlefield were far more complicated and far less malevolent than onlookers assumed. Through exhaustive research and interviews with the major players in this battle Mr. Carter demonstrates that, while the usual oversize Hollywood egos were forming secret alliances and stockpiling armaments, it was NBC that fired the shots that sank the Lusitania. Even as Mr. Leno felt attacked and Mr. O’Brien felt betrayed, and an unruly army of handlers spit invective into their cellphones, the real problem was simple: Unable to decide between Mr. Leno or Mr. O’Brien and fearful of losing either to the competition, NBC executives made a series of short-term moves to try to keep them both.
is a 2005 non-fiction book by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner. The book has been described as melding pop culture with economics, but has also been decried as "amateur sociology." By late 2009, it had sold over 4 million copies worldwide. The book is a collection of 'economic' articles written by Levitt, an expert who has already gained a reputation for applying economic theory to diverse subjects not usually covered by "traditional" economists; he does, however, accept the standard neoclassical microeconomic model of rational utility-maximization. In Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner argue that economics is, at root, the study of incentives.
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