City Life Goes Under the Microscope in Frank Vitale's 'Metropolis Organism'

Imagine an urban area growing through the years like a blossoming culture in a petri dish. Filmmaker Frank Vitale extends the metaphor to reality. In his theory, the city is “a living, breathing biological organism.”

The idea may seem far-fetched, but Vitale supports his hypothesis with an array of wondrous images and video embedded in his new e-book, The Metropolis Organism. The result is “a triumph chock-full of stunning images, on scales both intimate and grand,” according to our review. We recently spoke to Vitale about marketing his idea as an e-book and how he sees hints of the future ...

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Inside Addiction with Indie Author Chris Mendius

In Spoonful, Chris Mendius tells an engrossing tale of drug-dealing, the junkie lifestyle and the seductive perils of heroin, set in Chicago of the ’90s. The evocative work earned the book a Kirkus star. Here he talks to us about the levels of addiction, the tension of gentrification and his route to publication.

Read more of the best Indie books of 2011.

Spoonful is one of the most vivid portraits of the drug culture I’ve ever read. Was your research, um, personal?

I leaned on my experiences in high school and college in the early ’90s. Right now I ...

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