NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006

FRESH AIR Author Craig Yoe explores the risque art of the man behind Superman in his new book, Secret Identity: The Fetish Art Of Superman’s Co-creator Joe Shuster. As Yoe explains, artist Joe Shuster did not earn much money for his part in the creation of the man of steel. After suing D.C. Comics over the copyright for Superman, Shuster drew art for an obscure series of magazines called Nights Of Horror. In Secret Identity, Yoe collects Shuster’s racy drawings and details the scandal and murder trial related to Nights Of Horror. The author of over 30 books, Yoe runs […]

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RIP: Author J.G. Ballard Dead At 78

THE GUARDIAN: The novelist JG Ballard, who conjured up a bleak vision of modern life in a series of powerful novels and short stories published over more than 50 years, has died after a long battle with cancer. MORE THE TIMES ONLINE: Pinteresque, Dickensian, Shakespearean. Not many writers are so distinctive and influential that their name becomes an adjective in its own right. J.G. Ballard, who died yesterday morning after a long battle with cancer at the age of 78, was one of them. “Ballardian” is defined in the Collins English Dictionary as: “adj) 1. of James Graham Ballard (born […]

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BOOKS: Joe Queenan, Maximum Q&A

BY JONATHAN VALANIA Oscar Wilde famously postulated that all of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. Writer Joe Queenan wasn’t born in the gutter — actually it was somewhere near the false bottom of the Irish Catholic working class of Philadelphia circa 1950 — but you could see it from there. His father was a study in boozy failure and casual brutality whose self-inflicted setbacks would drag the family Queenan — Joe, three suffering sisters and an emotionally-remote, enabling mother — down to the ranks of the lower class for a four-year […]

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EARLY WORD: Book ‘Em, Danno

The Free Library Festival—a burst of books, music, and inspiration on the Parkway—will take place Saturday and Sunday, April 18 and 19, 2009. Join us at the Parkway Central Library for two days full of stimulating talks by award-winning writers, live music, children’s entertainment, and a bustling literary marketplace thronged with booklovers and booksellers. A fun, free way to spend the day, the Free Library Festival connects booklovers from throughout the mid-Atlantic region with the culture makers of the literary world. MORE And look for an exclusive Phawker Q&A with the mighty Joe Queenan later this week! Joe Queenan | […]

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BOOKS: Everybody’s Got Something To Hide

BY JONATHAN VALANIA Joe Shuster was paid the princely sum of $130 by DC Comics (then called National Comics) for all rights and ownership of Superman — which he invented in his bedroom in Cleveland with the help of Jerry Siegel, his high school buddy from down the street. Even back in 1938, that wasn’t a lot of money, but Shuster was just glad somebody had finally bought into the concept of the Man of Steel after years of knocking on the doors of publishers, to no avail. Shuster and Siegel were  tasked with creating future episodes of Superman, which, […]

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NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t

FRESH AIR British actor and comedian Russell Brand is known for his outspokenness, his outlandish appearance and his wit — not to mention a series of raunchy on-air prank calls that ended his tenure as host of a BBC radio show. But he’s best known in the U.S. for his role as a caddish rocker in the film Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and for hosting the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards. Recently, he’s put his over-the-top persona on the page with his memoir My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-up. My Booky Wook chronicles Brand’s struggle with addictions […]

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NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t

FRESH AIR “Pet fashion shows, Chihuahua social networking, veterinary antidepressants [and] ambulance-chasing animal lawyers” are just the tip of what Philadelphia-based journalist Michael Schaffer says is a kind of pet-obsession iceberg in the lives of the American middle class. In his new book One Nation Under Dog, Schaffer takes a close look at the $43 billion industry that’s grown to help enable that obsession, explaining how that booming market reflects our evolving ideas of consumerism, family, politics and domesticity. But One Nation Under Dog is no dry industry analysis: It’s a book, as Schaffer explains on his Web site, that’s […]

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HELP WANTED: Reading Is Fundamental

Do you like to read books? Do you have an opinion of those books you read? Can you speak English? Do you secretly long to be a pompous-and-opiniated-but-always articulate-witty-and-absolutely-correct-about-everything book reviewer for the metroblog of record in the sixth largest metropolis in the United States of America? If so, drop us a line at feed@phawker.com. Because in these hard times, you need free books — and Phawker needs book reviews that taste great don’t suck. RELATED: The Sun-Times Media Group, owner of the Chicago Sun-Times and dozens of suburban newspapers, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Tuesday, making it the fifth […]

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