Non-Fiction

Excerpt: MAYBE IT’S ME by Adrian Michael Kelly (ECW Press)

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Today, ECW Press publishes Maybe It’s Me, the new memoir by Adrian Michael Kelly; who is also the author of the story collection Ambassador Of What. It the raw story of someone navigating in a world marked by frustration, unrealized dreams, of getting in one’s own way, and finding a way through.

Here’s the synopsis:

A raw and riveting memoir of collapse, recovery, and reinvention

For most of his adult life, Adrian Michael Kelly specialized in failure — serial, sometimes comic, but also epic failure. Born to a gambling-addicted, compulsively spending mother who left when he was five, and raised by his dad, a haunted and often violent hard-drinking Scot, Kelly learned failure early and learned it remarkably well: how to be small, how to be safe, how to be self-defeating. By the age of 30, he was larking around abroad, trying (and failing) to write like his literary heroes while mired in bad relationships and dead-end work.

On a gray October morning in 1999, thunderously hungover and sick to death of himself, he boarded a train in Zurich bound for Bergamo and entered the initial, terrifying stages of a months-long collapse, less a psychological than a spiritual emergency — full-bore and loud.

Maybe It’s Me recounts what led up to that emergency as well as its aftermath, when Kelly came back to Canada to try to rebuild his life. For a while he did just that, but at the very summit of his hard-won achievements, life and his own folly brought him low again. Chronically unemployed, crippled by hideous back pain, and driven to despair by the mother of all writer’s block, he was divorced and nearly homeless at age 47. But along with how to fail, Kelly knew how not to quit, and he set about the process — long and difficult — of creating a consequential, good-enough life.

Free of self-pity and beautifully told, Maybe It’s Me is for everyone who gets in their own way — and can still have a laugh about it.

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Out Now: SOMEWHERE BETWEEN SCREAMING AND CRYING by Dan Franklin (Constable)

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Back in 2020, I read Dan Franklin‘s excellent history and examination of heavy metal, Heavy. His latest book, which I somehow missed until yesterday, is Somewhere Between Screaming and Crying, a new biography of the band Slipknot. Published yesterday by Constable, the book’s release was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the band’s second album: Iowa.

The album was released shortly before I started university (and, less nostalgically, a couple of weeks before 9/11). I have many fond, quite vivid memories of buying the album on release-day, and spending the following days walking the streets of Oxford, discman in my cargo-pants side pocket, the album on repeat. It remains an excellent album, although (in my humble opinion), the follow-up — Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses) — is better. I’m really looking forward to reading Franklin’s new book, and revisiting those heady days of nü-metal dominance. With Iowa blasting the background, of course…

Here’s the book’s official synopsis:

A captivating biography of Slipknot by acclaimed music writer, Dan Franklin, to coincide with the 25th Anniversary of Iowa: an album that redefined metal.

Slipknot is one of metal’s most iconic and recognisable bands. In late August 2001, Slipknot released their extraordinarily brutal second album, Iowa. With it, nine masked maniacs from the American Midwest captured the zeitgeist and reimagined the genre. The album’s emotional intensity and aggression was matched only by its commercial success, as it topped album charts and defined the nu metal era.

Two weeks after its release, the world changed forever. After the attacks of 9/11, Slipknot collided with history and a generation in upheaval. As the band’s members struggled with their own demons, it wasn’t certain that Slipknot would survive. What followed is a story that’s as tumultuous, gripping, and as real as it gets.

Somewhere Between Screaming And Crying is the story of Iowa‘s difficult birth and its remarkable impact in a world seemingly coming apart at the seams. As nu metal is embraced by a new generation today, Dan Franklin unravels how and why this much-maligned subgenre still connects so strongly and explores the ongoing influence of Slipknot as one of the most recognisable and artistically vital bands in metal today.

Dan Franklin’s Somewhere Between Screaming and Crying is out now in the UK, published by Constable. (At the time of writing, I couldn’t find any information about a North American publisher.)

Also on CR: Review of Heavy

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Quick Review: RED DEAD’S HISTORY by Tore C. Olsson (St. Martin’s Griffin)

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An engaging introduction to a certain period of US history, through the lens of one of the greatest video games ever made

A pathbreaking new way to examine US history, through the lens of a bestselling video game

Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption II, set in 1911 and 1899, are the most-played American history video games since The Oregon Trail. Beloved by millions, they’ve been widely acclaimed for their realism and attention to detail. But how do they fare as re-creations of history?

In this engaging book, award-winning American history professor Tore Olsson takes up that question and more. Weaving the games’ plots and characters into an exploration of American violence between 1870 and 1920, Olsson shows that it was more often disputes over capitalism and race, not just poker games and bank robberies, that fueled the bloodshed of these turbulent years. As such, this era has much to teach us today. From the West to the Deep South to Appalachia, Olsson reveals the gritty and brutal world that inspired the games, but sometimes lacks context and complexity on the digital screen. Colorful, fast-paced, and dramatic, Red Dead’s History sheds light on dark corners of the American past for gamers and history buffs alike.

Like many (many) people, I am a fan of the Red Dead Redemption franchise. The second game is a masterpiece, and I remember being completely swept up in the world and gameplay for many, many hours. When I saw that Professor Olsson had written a book looking at US history through the lens of the franchise, I knew I had to read it. While it took me a little time to get around to it (it’s now available in paperback), I am very happy to report that it’s an engaging and even valuable read.
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Excerpt: WITHOUT PREJUDICE by Harvey Brownstone (ECW Press)

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Today, we have an excerpt from Without Prejudice, the memoir of Harvey Brownstone, Canada’s first openly gay judge. The book tracks his life from his tumultuous childhood, through to his distinguished judicial career. The memoir is also in the process of being adapted into a movie of the same name, and starring David Arquette.

The excerpt covers some of the author’s thoughts on life on the bench, what it means to be a judge, and some of his early observations and training.

The book is out now, published by ECW Press. Here’s the synopsis:

This searing and unforgettable memoir chronicles the turbulent trajectory of Canada’s first openly gay judge. Harvey Brownstone recounts the astonishing obstacles he confronted and surmounted with fearless resolve, including parental rejection, poverty, depression, homophobia, institutional inertia, and professional sabotage.

Harvey Brownstone’s story is a tumultuous, sometimes hilarious, and uplifting journey from bullied child to outcast after coming out to his parents, to trailblazing lawyer, to distinguished judge.

Brownstone colorfully details his momentous and inventive judicial career marked by his numerous innovations of the justice system, particularly revolutionizing Ontario’s child support enforcement program.

In retirement, he is no longer shackled by the restraints traditionally imposed on the judiciary, and thus Brownstone provides a frank, unfiltered, and refreshing glimpse into the inner workings of the justice system, boldly delineating the strengths and weaknesses of criminal and family courts, both of which he claims are sorely in need of comprehensive reform. His remarkable story, reinventing himself from high-profile judge to highly acclaimed talk show host, is a testament to the resilience and triumph of the human spirit.

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Upcoming: THE SENSUALIST by Gary Shteyngart (Random House)

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I’ve been reading Gary Shteyngart‘s journalism for quite some time. This has not, strangely, translated into me reading much of his fiction… Weird. In 2024, The Atlantic published the author’s amusing feature “Crying Myself to Sleep on the icon of the Seas”, which went a little bit viral — it’s a well-written, amusing piece. It looks like this article, and others, will be collected in Shteyngart’s first essay collection, The Sensualist, which is due to be published by Random House in November. Here’s the synopsis:

In The Sensualist, Gary chases capybaras, the world’s largest (and cutest) rodent. He joins 7500 fellow passengers on the earth’s biggest cruise ship. He schleps around New York City in search of the best martini. He visits wool merchants and tailors in pursuit of the perfect blue suit.

To Gary, a sensualist believes the details of one’s life are always worth savoring and happiness can be found from looking around. A sensualist isn’t a glutton or an aesthete (and certainly not a snob), but someone who embraces the sublime—and the absurd. In The Sensualist Gary takes us across town and across the world, showing us how to appreciate.

Gary Shteyngart’s The Sensualist is due to be published by Random House in North America and in the UK, on November 10th.

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Very Quick Review: DARK WIRE by Joseph Cox (PublicAffairs)

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The engaging, fascinating story about the largest sting operation in history

In 2018, a powerful app for secure communications called Anom took root among organized criminals. They believed Anom allowed them to conduct business in the shadows. Except for one thing: It was secretly run by the FBI.

Backdoor access to Anom and a series of related investigations granted American, Australian, and European authorities a front-row seat to the underworld. Tens of thousands of criminals worldwide appeared in full view of the same agents they were trying to evade. International smugglers, money launderers, hitmen: a sprawling illicit global economy as efficient and interconnected as the legal one. Officers watched drug shipments and murder plots unfold, making arrests without blowing their cover.

Featuring a new epilogue with crucial updates to the case, Dark Wire reveals the true scale and stakes of this unprecedented operation through the agents and criminals who were there. This is a fly-on-the-wall thriller for the modern world, where no one can be sure who is watching.

I first learned about this book via the Wicked Words podcast: my partner sent me the link to the episode with “I think you’ll find this really interesting.” She was right, and I went out and bought the book. I’m happy to say that the book definitely lived up to my expectations. This is a must-read for anyone interested in true crime and politics. Continue reading →

Upcoming: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE ARTIFICIAL STATE by Jill Lepore (Liveright/Allen Lane)

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If you’ve been reading CR for any length of time, you’re probably familiar with the fact that I am a huge fan of Jill Lepore’s work. Whether a full-length book, or one of her frequent articles in the New Yorker, Lepore is a must-read for me. So, I frequently check to see if the author has a new book in the works, and was very happy to learn that she does: The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State is due to be published later this year (August), and I can’t wait. Technology and its place in American society and culture has long been an area of interest of the author’s (and mine, but I can’t write about it nearly as well), and I have very high hopes for this new book. Here’s the synopsis:

“The Artificial State is the factory farming of humans, the sorting and segmenting, the isolation and alienation, as if humans were becoming to machines what animals had become to humans.” — Jill Lepore

“Much in history is headlong but few grand transformations have been more precipitate or more heedless than the rise of… the Artificial State,” writes Jill Lepore in this passionate account of how rule by machine has ravaged the world. Inspired by Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, which argued in 1951 that the machinery of modern life was reshaping the very fundamentals of human existence, Lepore, profoundly disturbed by the technology revolution and by the soulless inundation of artificial intelligence, unfurls a new history for our own twenty-first century.

Building on an essay in The New Yorker in 2024, Lepore’s clarion call traces our increasing dependence on and strangulation by data. Political campaigns, awash in an avalanche of fake bots, have been reduced to attention-mining algorithms, while multinational media corporations dictate public discourse, and the era of the liberal nation-state seems to be coming to a rapid end, replaced by billionaire technocrats reliant on autocracy and the tools of AI.

With Orwellian overtones, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State demonstrates how technology has corroded global democracy, leading to the destruction of both human community and capacity for self-government, creating a new form of AI government, a digital citizen’s assembly, where AI will recommend the course of action to humans in place of human-run legislatures. Especially sobering with this proliferation of “dizzying, ever-changing schemes, prophesies, and predictions” is that the Artificial State has come at the expense of the natural world, leading to catastrophic loss of wildlife habitat and biodiversity.

Deliberately alarming, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, despite its abundance of dire facts, is not a funeral dirge; rather, it’s an inspiring wake-up call, written in Lepore’s typically elegiac prose, which demonstrates that nothing about the Artificial State was inevitable, for it is a “government without consent, even government without humans.” It can, Lepore asserts, be dismantled. Other heinous systems, like feudalism, fascism, and slavery, have also been dismantled, but disassembly requires identifying the parts, tracing the sources. It requires telling a new history. This is the purpose of The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State.

As an aside, one of the author’s observations about technology has stuck with me, ever since I read it in one of the pieces included in The Deadline, a fantastic collection of the author’s articles: “Disruption is innovation without progress.”

Jill Lepore’s The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State is due to be published by Liveright in North America and Allen Lane in the UK, on August 25th.

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[This post has been updated, April 25th: New North American and UK covers added.]

Upcoming: A SCREAMING LIFE by Kim Thayil (William Morrow)

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This summer (June), William Morrow is due to publish the much-anticipated memoir of Kim Thayil, lead guitarist of Soundgarden: A Screaming Life. Like many rock-loving children of the 1980s, I was a big fan of the Seattle grunge scene, and that included Soundgarden — although, it took a little longer for me to discover them, after Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains. As soon as I saw this in the publisher’s catalogue, it became a Must Read of 2026. Here’s the synopsis:

The memoir by co-founding member of Soundgarden and lead guitarist Kim Thayil about one of the 1990s’ signature rock bands

From Soundgarden’s humble beginnings manifesting grunge in Seattle’s beer-soaked punk clubs to their revered status today as rock icons, the band’s journey has been nothing short of extraordinary. In A Screaming Life, founding member and guitar god Kim Thayil goes backstage to introduce the band that fearlessly pushed the boundaries of rock, invented a new genre, and amassed fervent fans from every corner of the world.

Thayil shares the story of how he and his Soundgarden bandmates — Hiro Yamamoto, Ben Shepherd, Matt Cameron, and Chris Cornell — faced the triumphs and challenges on the road to their historic and influential rise. His storytelling channels the essence of Soundgarden’s era-defining sound — one that’s supercharged with raw creativity and unapologetic lyrics — and explores the ways that Soundgarden was shaped by the diverse backgrounds of its creators: Thayil’s Indian heritage and founding bassist Hiro Yamamoto’s Japanese background added unique dimensions to the band’s identity, influencing not only their music but also their experiences in the industry.

For Soundgarden fans and ‘90s alternative rock enthusiasts, A Screaming Life not only gives behind-the-scenes access to one of the most revered bands, but it also demonstrates the power music and its creators have to transform culture.

Can’t wait to read this.

Kim Thayil’s A Screaming Life is due to be published by William Morrow in North America, on June 9th.

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Upcoming: WHEN WE WERE YOUNG AND FEARLESS by Jonathan Abrams (Harper)

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This November, Harper are due to publish When We Were Young and Fearless, the latest book by Jonathan Abrams, award-winning sports journalist who has covered the NBA for multiple outlets (including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Grantland). Abrams is also the author of The Come Up and All the Pieces Matter.

In his latest book, Abrams will offer readers a deep dive into the lives and careers of three of the NBA’s current superstars: Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and James Harden. All three of these players would go on to win League MVPs, and KD went on to win two championships with the Golden State Warriors, and their careers have done a lot to change the League along the way — something Abrams aims to show in this book. I’m really looking forward to reading this. (If you wanted to get a bit of a jump on KD’s and Harden’s story, you could also check out Matt Sullivan’s Can’t Knock the Hustle, which covers those two players’ short-lived, not-entirely-successful move to the Nets in 2019.)

Here’s the synopsis:

It’s one of the greatest “what ifs” in sports – what if the Thunder had kept Durant, Westbrook, and Harden, three of the league’s young, exciting stars and future MVPs, together? Their departure from Oklahoma City begins two decades of repercussions for basketball and the formation of the modern NBA.

When We Were Young and Fearless is The Social Network for basketball. As he touches on universal themes of loyalty, money, power, friendship, class and lost innocence, Abrams ponders the central irony of athletic greatness: how much is an individual willing to sacrifice to win in a team sport?

Jonathan Abrams’s When We Were Young and Fearless is due to be published by Harper in North America and in the UK, on November 3rd.

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Quick Review: MASTERS OF THE GAME by Sam Smith & Phil Jackson (Penguin Press)

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A conversational history of the NBA, by an an acclaimed journalist and an 11-time champion player/coach…

The legendary sportswriter and the Hall of Fame, eleven-time NBA champion coach separate the music from the noise in the stories of the greatest who ever played and their impact on the game

Sam Smith and Phil Jackson grew to know and respect each other in the late 1980s, when Smith was a Chicago Tribune sportswriter and Jackson was an assistant coach for the Chicago Bulls. Forty years later, the two remain close friends. In 2021, Smith helped the NBA arrive at a list of the seventy-five greatest players of all time in celebration of its seventy-fifth anniversary. Phil Jackson was asked to participate too, but he’s not a big fan of ranking greatness. They’ve been enjoying the argument ever since.

In Masters of the Game, Smith and Jackson chop it up about the basketball life, the sport, and the genius and the shadow side of the all-time greats: Jordan, Kobe, Shaq, Magic, Bill Russell, Wilt, Jerry West, Bird, LeBron, KD, Steph Curry, Bill Walton, and more. In a conversation full of high-grade analysis and high-grade gossip, we meet the stars of long-ago eras of basketball and see the mark race left on players and the business of the game — and we get a master class on character and the alchemy of a good team. And of course, inevitably, these two old heads get into the GOAT debate.

There are so many huge characters here, and Smith and Jackson can hold their own with any of them. Their spirit — sharp, wise, irreverent, honest, respectful of the lore and legacy of the game but never pious — and the clash of their different perspectives combine to make this book a joyous ride, a short course in greatness open to all students.

Masters of the Game is a different kind of NBA book. It’s a collaboration between Sam Smith, the best-selling chronicler of the Michael Jordan-era Chicago Bulls, and Phil Jackson, the coach who helped take Jordan to all six of his championships and Kobe Bryant’s five. When I first learned of the book, it was a very enticing proposition. I’m glad to report that it mostly lived up to my expectations, and offers a fresh perspective on the League and some of its brightest stars. Continue reading →