AMAZONIA: FIVE YEARS AT THE EPICENTER OF THE DOT.COM JUGGERNAUT
Hyperion
Greg Williams
CUBA AND ITS MUSIC: FROM THE FIRST DRUMS TO THE MAMBO
Though it’s 600 pages long, the book doesn’t get beyond 1952, the year of Batista’s second coup–Sublette’s working on another volume. But the commentary on artists like Septeto Nacional, Machito, Arsenio Rodrigues, and Perez Prado is astute and illuminating. Sublette also takes care to address the island’s codependent political and cultural relationship to the U.S. By the end of the book his claim that Cuban music was a crucial ingredient in the birth of rock ‘n’ roll is more persuasive than you might expect. –Peter Margasak
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The latest from Robert Arellano (author of Fast Eddie, King of the Bees and a member of various Will Oldham bands) is a raucously funny satire of machine politics wrapped up in a parody of Don Quixote. Don Dimaio is the corrupt mayor of La Plata, which is, as the narrator-mayor himself says, “a town on the take. You wanna be a cop? Five will get you into the academy. If my mother knew your mother, maybe three.”
