books

Shocking Paris 
by Stanley Meisler
Soutine's migrations and paranoia fulfilled.  

M Train 
by Patti Smith
Japanese style prose, NYC blues, and coffee.

Sea of Poppies 
by Amitav Ghosh
Up and down the Ganges to Calcutta, East Africa and Baltimore in the 19th Century.  

Rhythm & Blues:  A Life in American Music
Autobiography of Jerry Wexler
A NY street kid turned producer of Ray, Aretha, Doug Sahm, Willie, and the christian albums of Bob Dylan.

My Guru and His Disciple
by Christopher Isherwood
Worn from dark adventures in Weimar Germany, a WW2 pacifist moves west to write for the movies, meditate, devote to an Indian Swami, seek Samadhi, hangout with Huxley, Cukor, Garbo, and cruise the gay spots in the blacked-out nights of air raid Hollywood.  

Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink
Autobiography of Elvis Costello
Sensitive memoir of an un-apologetic emotional narcissist who paid attention to everything his showbiz Dad, TAMLA, and England in the 60s and 70s taught him.  

The Hunters 
by James Salter
Elegant novel about the male competitive hang-ups of Korean War ace and casualty pilots.

Prater Violet
by Christopher Isherwood
A book about making a movie in England as Europe fell to the Fascists.  

Escaping the Delta:  Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues
by Elijah Wald
More than The Crossroads.  More than one man and guitar on the jukeboxes of Mississippi with Mamie Smith, Sippie Wallace, Peetie Wheatstraw, Harlem Hamfats, Mississippi Sheiks,  and Leroy Carr. 

Music on my Mind
by Willie "The Lion" Smith
Survives a North Jersey afro-yiddish childhood and WWI artillery to cross the Hudson and play all the spots with Fats and James P. Johnson and everyone else.