Books

Friday, April 12, 2013

Eisenhower's Sputnik Moment: The Race for Space and World Prestige (Cornell University Press), by Yanek Mieczkowski

America's Chicken Little pundits and politicians cried "The sky is falling!" when the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. President Eisenhower, however, maintained an eerie calm that infuriated columnists and

CD Reviews

Friday, April 12, 2013

Stephen Stills

Carry On (Rhino)

By David Luhrssen

Although Stephen Stills sometimes seems overshadowed by his frequent collaborator, Neil Young, the new four-disc career retrospective offers ample reminders that Stills, a gifted and often imaginative songwriter, was integral

CD Reviews

Friday, April 12, 2013

Live from Festival au Desert (Clermont Music)

Various Artists

By David Luhrssen

Timbuktu was long a symbol of all things distant and exotic; in recent years the ancient city was the site for an annual international musical event, the Festival in the Desert, and the focal point for an indigenous genre that

Film

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

42

Major League Player

By David Luhrssen

When Jackie Robinson crossed the color line at Ebbets Field in 1947, many Americans weren’t ready to see a black man play ball in the same league as white men. Seven years before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against legal

Film

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

White Elephant

Doing Good Against Impossible Odds

By David Luhrssen

In White Elephant, Villa Virgen is an enormous cinderblock, scrap metal and packing board slum in Buenos Aires. Living there are 30,000 souls, squatters whose meager social services are provided by a young social worker

Books

Thursday, April 4, 2013

The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-in Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation (Hill and Wang), by Adam Rome

By David Luhrssen

University of Delaware environmental historian Adam Rome has been teaching Earth Day for years, but when he looked into its origins, he was surprised by the scant documentation. In The Genius of Earth Day, Rome explores

Books

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Hitler’s Rival: Ernst Thälmann in Myth and Memory (University Press of Kentucky), by Russell Lemmons

By David Luhrssen

Ernst Thälmann ran against Hitler in Germany’s 1932 presidential election. Neither man won, but after Hitler seized power, the communist Thälmann was arrested and eventually murdered at Buchenwald. Ironically, as Russell

CD Reviews

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Joe 2.0

Better Living through Strings (Darth Kreisler)

By David Luhrssen

The idea of chamber rock began in the 1960s with The Beatles leading the way. Seldom has the concept been realized as well in recent years as on Joe 2.0’s CD. The Milwaukee sextet, led by violinist Joe Ketchum and fronted

Film

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Busy Semester at UW-Milwaukee

Film department sponsors research center for Indian director

By David Luhrssen

Books

Sunday, March 31, 2013

100 Things Brewers Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die (Triumph Books), by Tom Haudricourt

By David Luhrssen

As is often the case when an author takes on a project, Tom Haudricourt thought that finding ideas and sources for his Brewers’ book would be difficult. Instead, the hard part was culling through the hundreds of things that could

Carry On (Rhino)

Various Artists

Major League Player

Doing Good Against Impossible Odds

Better Living through Strings (Darth Kreisler)

Film department sponsors research center for Indian director

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