An excellent book for readers interested in international jazz and Japanese culture.
American expatriate professor Pronko presents a richly detailed guide to jazz venues, musicians, and more in Tokyo and Yokohama.
The author, a teacher of American literature and culture at Meiji Gakuin University by day, describes his book as “the product of nearly thirty years of listening and reporting on Japanese jazz”; he’s written on the topic for the Japan Times and Newsweek Japan, in addition to publishing online reviews. Rather than categorizing clubs by location or the specific types of music they specialize in, Pronko has opted for a more vibes-based arrangement, highlighting small places where listeners pack in, calm and unassuming neighborhood spots that are coffee shops by day, and slick corporate venues where the staff speaks English, among others. (There are additional sections about places and musicians that play music from a few other, related genres, such as the blues.) In addition to venue names, locations, phone numbers, cover charges, relevant websites, and directions, the entries provide catchy, one-line sketches, such as “Funky basement room for wild jazz” or “Hammond B3 Organ Heaven” before describing each place in depth. Pronko then lists notable musicians worth checking out (drummers, pianists, trombonists, singers, and others) before launching into a fascinating section on jazz kissaten: small coffee shops that play recorded jazz, costing “just the price of a cup of coffee for hours of listening”; patrons can make requests or even bring in their own music to play. The book concludes with some stellar commentary by the author, offering a rich history of jazz in Japan and how it took root there. Not only do these essays offer wonderful background detail, but they also definitively show that Pronko’s affable, professorial style is the book’s best feature, setting it far above anything one might simply look up online. There’s always the danger that guides like this can feel snobbish or exclusionary, but here, Pronko effectively welcomes readers into the Japanese jazz experience, which will appeal to tourists and armchair travelers alike.
An excellent book for readers interested in international jazz and Japanese culture.Pub Date: April 30, 2025
ISBN: 9781942410379
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Raked Gravel Press
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1200
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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