Guest Review

Diary of a Madman: The Geto Boys, Life, Death, and the Roots of Southern Rap
by Brad "Scarface" Jordan with Benjamin Meadows-Ingram
Dey Street Books
Trade Paperback


Reviewed by Brent Sanders

Autobiographies are dicey, at best. They tend to lapse into fevered, self-serving apologia, or bonehead “and then I...” recitation.

The best turn into salient meditations on life choices and paths. Such books are rare.

Brad Jordan, better known as “Scarface”, a pivotal member of the pioneering hip-hop group the Geto Boys, and later a successful solo artist, has written an autobiography that asks no favors, and makes no apologies. It’s a fascinating account of his evolution as an artist, a businessman, and a human being.

Lyrically, the Geto Boys were known for their violent imagery. But Jordan, with his tendency to introspection and his easy, matter-of-fact delivery, gave them a dimension other hip-hop groups did not possess. The braggadocio was thickly applied, but there was an element of unpredictability, even self-doubt, that gave it a depth that transcended the standard “ho/glock/bitch” mentality that the genre too often passes off as “real”.

Digging into his chaotic childhood, where music and writing provided an outlet for a restless mind, Jordan takes us into his adolescence, and his graduation from low-level drug dealer to hip-hop artist, signed to James Prince’s Rap-A-Lot Records. He thought he was going in with his own group, but Prince connected him with a couple of other local rappers, Willie Dee and Bushwick Bill, to form the seminal band.

He recounts the years in chronological order, always using his music as a touchstone. He touches on his relationships with other rappers and producers, including Ice Cube, Chuck D, and even a young Kanye West, one of the producers on “The Fix”, his 2002 album, considered a high water mark of the genre.

We learn that he’s a recalcitrant music junkie, with Pink Floyd being a particular favorite, and that he once paid a club DJ to play nothing but Van Morrison all night. He recounts honestly his business dealings, including his stint as the President of Def Jam South records, and the twisted loyalties that come with independent rap labels and street level entrepreneurs like Prince, with whom he has a complicated history.

Humorous anecdotes, some darkly so, are liberally applied, often with the jarring and poignant remembrances of friends passed away. But his calm acceptance and willingness to confront the confusion of his life are what lifts this book above the standard, salacious tell-all hustle of most musical biographies.

Like his vocal approach, the writing here is smooth and efficient, with a rapper’s propensity for cramming a lot of information into a few sentences. And rather than try to reconcile the contradictions in his life, Jordan embraces them.

Recommended Reading Soundtrack:

1. Mind of a Lunatic (Geto Boys)

2. Mind Playin’ Tricks on Me (Geto Boys)

3. Diary of a Madman

4.. A Minute to Pray and a Second to Die

5. I’m Dead 6. Six Feet Deep (Geto Boys)

7. No Tears

8. I Seen a Man Die 9. Hand of the Dead Body 1

10. The World is a Ghetto (Geto Boys)

11. Mary Jane

12. Last of a Dying Breed

That’s a good start. There's a lot more where that came from.

 

 

If At Birth You Don't Succeed

My Adventures with Disaster and Destiny
by Zach Anner
Henry Holt and Co.
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

“Zach Anner is way more than an inspirational figure for anyone who has ever felt impossibly different: he’s also a great f**king writer. Wise and funny, with unfailing insight into the booby trap known as the human mind, you will hang on every word as you watch him turn his considerable intellectual gifts into a life worth envying. I like that this book has no genre, and neither does this special man.”—Lena Dunham

Comedian Zach Anner opens his frank and devilishly funny book, If at Birth You Don't Succeed, with an admission: he botched his own birth. Two months early, underweight and under-prepared for life, he entered the world with cerebral palsy and an uncertain future. So how did this hairless mole-rat of a boy blossom into a viral internet sensation who's hosted two travel shows, impressed Oprah, driven the Mars Rover, and inspired a John Mayer song? (It wasn't "Your Body is a Wonderland.")

Zach lives by the mantra: when life gives you wheelchair, make lemonade. Whether recounting a valiant childhood attempt to woo Cindy Crawford, encounters with zealous faith healers, or the time he crapped his pants mere feet from Dr. Phil, Zach shares his fumbles with unflinching honesty and characteristic charm. By his thirtieth birthday, Zach had grown into an adult with a career in entertainment, millions of fans, a loving family, and friends who would literally carry him up mountains.

If at Birth You Don't Succeed is a hilariously irreverent and heartfelt memoir about finding your passion and your path even when it's paved with epic misadventure. This is the unlikely but not unlucky story of a man who couldn't safely open a bag of Skittles, but still became a fitness guru with fans around the world. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll fall in love with the Olive Garden all over again, and learn why cerebral palsy is, definitively, "the sexiest of the palsies."

Praise for Zach Anner

“Cerebral palsy couldn't stop Anner from becoming a celeb, traveling the world, and Friending Oprah (for starters).”—Cosmopolitan

“Zach makes you want to be a better person, with his humor and his heart and everything he's had to deal with from the time he was born. I've never met anyone like him, and I've met a lot of people.” —Oprah Winfrey

“Zach Anner is a truly inspiring and hysterical human being with a warped sense of humor (and body). He’s also an exceptional writer and his memoir is an absolute joy.”—Rainn Wilson

“Zach Anner is the living definition of ‘giving better than he’s gotten.’ Life dealt him a difficult hand but he managed to beat the house with humor, heart, and a fearless punk attitude. Required reading.”—Patton Oswalt

“I love Zach Anner and I love his memoir. If everyone were a little more like Zach, the world may not be a better place, but it would be funnier place, which is a great step forward.”—Alexis Ohanian

“He’s a unique, creative kid with a smart, edgy sense of humor.”—Arsenio Hall

“I think I speak for everybody when I say...I want to see more of Zach.” —John Mayer

“Wonderful. . . Anner’s comedy is the peppy, uplifting sort you’d expect from someone who Oprah says ‘makes [her] want to be a better person,’ such as his elaborate Olive Garden metaphors for the nature of life. . . . Anner remarks wryly that being expected to act as an ambassador for the disabled ‘is a tightrope walk, which is hard on four wheels.’ Maybe so, but with this book, he makes it look easy.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Funny, empowering…An inspirational memoir with a seasoned, infectious sense of humor…[Anner’s book chronicles] his three decades of life (so far) with cerebral palsy, a permanent condition that hasn’t prevented him from living his dream as a comic, a media sensation, and a motivational speaker.”—Kirkus Reviews

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Movie Freak

My Life Watching Movies
by Owen Gleiberman
Hachette Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Owen Gleiberman has spent his life watching movies-first at the drive-in, where his parents took him to see wildly inappropriate adult fare like Rosemary's Baby when he was a wide-eyed 9 year old, then as a possessed cinemaniac who became a film critic right out of college. In Movie Freak, his enthrallingly candid, funny, and eye-opening memoir, Gleiberman captures what it's like to live life through the movies, existing in thrall to a virtual reality that becomes, over time, more real than reality itself.

Gleiberman paints a bittersweet portrait of his complicated and ultimately doomed friendship with Pauline Kael, the legendary New Yorker film critic who was his mentor and muse. He also offers an unprecedented inside look at what the experience of being a critic is really all about, detailing his stint at The Boston Phoenix and then, starting in 1990, at EW, where he becomes a voice of obsession battling-to a fault-to cling to his independence.

Gleiberman explores the movies that shaped him, from the films that first made him want to be a critic (Nashville and Carrie), to what he hails as the sublime dark trilogy of the 1980s (Blue Velvet, Sid and Nancy, and Manhunter), to the scruffy humanity of Dazed and Confused, to the brilliant madness of Natural Born Killers, to the transcendence of Breaking the Waves, to the pop rapture of Moulin Rouge! He explores his partnership with Lisa Schwarzbaum and his friendships and encounters with such figures as Oliver Stone, Russell Crowe, Richard Linklater, and Ben Affleck. He also writes with confessional intimacy about his romantic relationships and how they echoed the behavior of his bullying, philandering father. And he talks about what film criticism is becoming in the digital age: a cacophony of voices threatened by an insidious new kind of groupthink.

Ultimately, Movie Freak is about the primal pleasure of film and the enigmatic dynamic between critic and screen. For Gleiberman, the moving image has a talismanic power, but it also represents a kind of sweet sickness, a magnificent obsession that both consumes and propels him.

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How I Shed My Skin

Unlearning the Racist Lessons of a Southern Childhood
by Jim Grimsley
Algonquin Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

“. . . Good people taught and still teach racism to their children without a second thought.  This was true in the South of my birth and remains so to the present . . . We teach that God created the races to be separate from one another for a purpose, and we preach that this purpose cannot be to mix, because why then would He have created the separation in the first place? We teach that when people are different from each other, one is better and the other worse . . . We teach that black and white are not simply different but opposite.”

More than sixty years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that America’s schools could no longer be segregated by race.

Critically acclaimed novelist Jim Grimsley was eleven years old in 1966 when federally mandated integration of schools went into effect in the state and the school in his small eastern North Carolina town was first integrated. Until then, blacks and whites didn’t sit next to one another in a public space or eat in the same restaurants, and they certainly didn’t go to school together.

Going to one of the private schools that almost immediately sprang up was not an option for Jim: his family was too poor to pay tuition, and while they shared the community’s dismay over the mixing of the races, they had no choice but to be on the front lines of his school’s desegregation.
What he did not realize until he began to meet these new students was just how deeply ingrained his own prejudices were and how those prejudices had developed in him despite the fact that prior to starting sixth grade, he had actually never known any black people.

Now, more than forty years later, Grimsley looks back at that school and those times—remembering his own first real encounters with black children and their culture. The result is a narrative both true and deeply moving. Jim takes readers into those classrooms and onto the playing fields as, ever so tentatively, alliances were forged and friendships established. And looking back from today’s perspective, he examines how far we have really come.

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Anger Is an Energy

My Life Uncensored
by John Lydon
Dey Street Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:


From the legendary frontman of the Sex Pistols, comes the complete, unvarnished story of his life in his own words.

John Lydon is an icon—one of the most recognizable and influential cultural figures of the last forty years. As Johnny Rotten, he was the lead singer of the Sex Pistols-the world’s most notorious band. The Pistols shot to fame in the mid-1970s with songs such as “Anarchy in the UK” and “God Save the Queen.” So incendiary was their impact at the time that in their native England, the Houses of Parliament questioned whether they violated the Traitors and Treasons Act, a crime that carries the death penalty to this day. The Pistols would inspire the formation of numerous other groundbreaking groups and Lydon would become the unlikely champion of a generation clamoring for change.

Following on the heels of the Pistols, Lydon formed Public Image Ltd (PiL), expressing an equally urgent impulse in his character: the constant need to reinvent himself, to keep moving. From their beginnings in 1978 PiL set the groundbreaking template for a band that continues to challenge and thrive to this day, while also recording one of the eighties most powerful anthems, “Rise.” Lydon also found time for making innovative dance records with the likes of Afrika Bambaataa and Leftfield. By the nineties he’d broadened his reach into other media while always maintaining his trademark invective and wit, most memorably hosting Rotten TV on VH1.

John Lydon remains a captivating and dynamic figure to this day—both as a musician, and, thanks to his outspoken, controversial, and from-the-hip opinions, as a cultural commentator. In Anger is an Energy, he looks back on a life full of incident, from his beginnings as a sickly child of immigrant Irish parents growing up in post-war London to his present status as a vibrant, alternative hero.

The book includes 70 black-and-white and color photos, many which are rare or never-before-seen.

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Buck 'Em!

The Autobiography of Buck Owens
by Buck Owens with Randy Poe
Backbeat Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Born in Texas and raised in Arizona, Buck Owens eventually found his way to Bakersfield, California. Unlike the vast majority of country singers, songwriters, and musicians who made their fortunes working and living in Nashville, the often rebellious and always independent Owens chose to create his own brand of country music some 2,000 miles away from Music City – racking up a remarkable 21 number-one hits along the way. In the process he helped give birth to a new country sound and did more than any other individual to establish Bakersfield as a country music center.

In the latter half of the 1990s, Buck began working on his autobiography. Over the next few years, he talked into the microphone of a cassette tape machine for nearly one hundred hours, recording the story of his life. With his near-photographic memory, Buck recalled everything from his early days wearing hand-me-down clothes in Texas to his glory years as the biggest country star of the 1960s; from his legendary Carnegie Hall concert to his multiple failed marriages; from his hilarious exploits on the road to the tragic loss of his musical partner and best friend, Don Rich; from his days as the host of a local TV show in Tacoma, Washington, to his co-hosting the network television show Hee Haw; and from his comeback hit, “Streets of Bakersfield,” to his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

In these pages, Buck also shows his astute business acumen, having been among the first country artists to create his own music publishing company. He also tells of negotiating the return of all of his Capitol master recordings, his acquisition of numerous radio stations, and of his conceiving and building the Crystal Palace, one of the most venerated musical venues in the country.

“The stream of stories throughout this book captures, with an uncanny accuracy, the way I heard Buck speak whenever he told a story to someone.” – Dwight Yoakam

“An immersive and informative look at one of country's most influential and surprisingly humble musicians. Poe personalizes the narrator and gives readers a true sense of the voice of the hardworking musician who helped define the Bakersfield Sound.” – Publishers Weekly

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By Some Miracle I Made It Out of There

A Memoir
by Tom Sizemore with Anna David
Atria Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

A harrowing, deeply personal memoir of the acclaimed actor’s wild ride through Hollywood, fueled by his crippling addiction to methamphetamines, exposing the darkest side of fame and how one man found a path to recovery.

Tom Sizemore has been called many things. Brilliant. Brutal. Fiercely talented. Angry. Drug-addicted. In reality, he’s all of them. He’s a survivor of the Detroit ghetto, the father of twin boys, and a veteran of dozens of movies. He’s also now sober, after his addiction took his life as far down, arguably, as any human being could go.

Through screen-stealing performances in the 1990s movies True Romance, Heat, and Natural Born Killers, Sizemore was so in demand that even when his drug problem was widely known, directors such as Steven Spielberg offered him roles and begged him to stay sober for them. Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson, Robert Downey, Jr., and Johnny Depp each went out of their way to befriend him. But the same man who once romanced Elizabeth Hurley and Juliette Lewis was accused of domestic violence by the world’s most famous madam and moved from Beverly Hills to solitary confinement in state prison.


For years, Sizemore’s days were filled with overdoses, suicide attempts, and homelessness. By Some Miracle I Made It Out of There is a harrowing journey into the heart of his addiction, told in riveting and often shocking detail. By turns gritty and heartbreaking, it is also one man’s look at a particular moment in entertainment history—a window into the drug-fueled spotlight that sent Robert Downey, Jr., to jail and killed River Phoenix, Heath Ledger, Chris Farley, and many others far before their time.

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Living Like a Runaway

A Memoir
by Lita Ford
Dey Street Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

In this long-awaited, emotionally powerful memoir,  “HEAVY METAL’S LEADING FEMALE ROCKER” (Rolling Stone) opens up about the ’70s and ’80s music scene and her trailblazing life as the lead guitarist of the “pioneering band” (New York Times) the Runaways and her platinum-selling, Grammy-nominated solo career. Hailed as “the mother of all metal” (Los Angeles Times) and “one of the greatest female electric guitar players to ever pick up the instrument” (Elle), Lita Ford bares her soul in Living Like a Runaway.

Murder at Camp Delta

A Staff Sergeant's Pursuit of the Truth About Guantanamo Bay
by Joseph Hickman
Simon & Schuster
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

The revelatory inside story about Guantánamo Bay—and the US government cover up—by the Staff Sergeant who felt honor-bound to uncover it: “A disturbing account…made with compelling clarity and strength of character” (Publishers Weekly).

Staff Sergeant Joe Hickman was a loyal member of the armed forces and a proud American patriot. For twenty years, he worked as a prison guard, a private investigator, and in the military, earning more than twenty commendations and awards. When he re-enlisted after 9/11, he served as a team leader and Sergeant of the Guard in Guantánamo Naval Base. From the moment he arrived at Camp Delta, something was amiss. The prions were chaotic, detainees were abused, and Hickman uncovered by accident a secret facility he labeled “Camp No.” On June 9, 2006, the night Hickman was on duty, three prisoners died, supposed suicides, and Hickman knew something was seriously wrong. So began his epic search for the truth, an odyssey that would lead him to conclude that the US government was using Guantánamo not just as a prison, but as a training ground for interrogators to test advanced torture techniques.


For the first time, Hickman details the inner workings of Camp Delta: the events surrounding the death of three prisoners, the orchestrated cover-up, and the secret facility at the heart of it all. From his own eyewitness account and a careful review of thousands of documents, he deconstructs the government’s account of what happened and proves that the military not only tortured prisoners, but lied about their deaths. By revealing Guantánamo’s true nature, Sergeant Hickman shows us why the prison has been so difficult to close. “Murder at Camp Delta is a plainly told, unsettling corrective to the many jingoistic accounts of post-9/11 military action” (Kirkus Reviews).

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Version Control

A Novel
by Dexter Palmer
Pantheon Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

The acclaimed author of The Dream of Perpetual Motion returns with a compelling novel about the effects of science and technology on our friendships, our love lives, and our sense of self.

Rebecca Wright has reclaimed her life, finding her way out of her grief and depression following a personal tragedy years ago. She spends her days working in customer support for the internet dating site where she first met her husband. But she has a strange, persistent sense that everything around her is somewhat off-kilter: she constantly feels as if she has walked into a room and forgotten what she intended to do there; on TV, the President seems to be the wrong person in the wrong place; her dreams are full of disquiet. Meanwhile, her husband’s decade-long dedication to his invention, the causality violation device (which he would greatly prefer you not call a “time machine”) has effectively stalled his career and made him a laughingstock in the physics community. But he may be closer to success than either of them knows or can possibly imagine.
Version Control is about a possible near future, but it’s also about the way we live now. It’s about smart phones and self-driving cars and what we believe about the people we meet on the Internet. It’s about a couple, Rebecca and Philip, who have experienced a tragedy, and about how they help–and fail to help–each other through it. Emotionally powerful and stunningly visionary, Version Control will alter the way you see your future and your present.

You're Better Than me

A Memoir
by Bonnie McFarlane
Anthony Bourdain Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

In the spirit of Mindy Kaling, Kelly Oxford, and Sarah Silverman, a compulsively readable and outrageously funny memoir of growing up as a fish out of water, finding your voice, and embracing your inner crazy-person, from popular actress, writer, and comedian Bonnie McFarlane.

 It took Bonnie McFarlane a lot of time, effort, and tequila to get to where she is today. Before she starred on Last Comic Standing and directed her own films, she was an inappropriately loud tomboy growing up on her parents’ farm in Cold Lake, Canada, wetting her pants during standardized tests and killing chickens. Desperate to find “her people”—like-minded souls who wouldn’t judge her because she was honest, ruthless, and okay, sometimes really rude—Bonnie turned to comedy. In her explosively funny and no-holds-barred memoir, Bonnie tells it like it is, and lays bare all of her smart (and her not-so-smart) decisions along her way to finding her friends and her comedic voice.

From fistfights in elementary school to riding motorcycles to the World Famous Comic Strip, to Late Night with David Letterman, and through to her infamous “c” word bit on Last Comic Standing, You’re Better Than Me is her funny and outrageous trip through the good, bad, and ugly of her life in comedy. McFarlane doesn’t always keep her mouth shut when she should, but at least she makes people laugh. And that’s all that matters, right?

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Online Marketing for Busy Authors

A Step-by-Step Guide (available 4/19/16)
by Fauzia Burke
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Trade Paperback

 "Fauzia Burke has been on the web promoting books from the very beginning . . . She knows exactly what kinds of web promotion will drive book sales, and doesn't waste your time or money with distractions."
-- Madeline McIntosh, President, Penguin Random House

There has truly never been a better time to be an author. For the first time, you have direct access to your readers via the Internet -- you can create a community eagerly awaiting your next book (and telling their friends about it too). But where do you start? How do sort through the dizzying range of online options? Where is it most worth spending your time -- what is a "must do" and what is a "might do"?

Enter Fauzia Burke, a digital book marketing pioneer and friend of overwhelmed writers everywhere. She not only makes the job of building your online brand doable, but she proves that it can be fun and fulfilling, too.

Burke takes authors step by step through the process of identifying their unique personal brand, defining their audience, clarifying their aspirations and goals, and setting priorities. Once that foundation is established, she walks you through the process of developing a personalized, sustainable long-term online marketing plan. She offers advice on designing a successful website, building a mailing list of super fans, blogging, creating an engagement strategy for social media, and more.

"Once you build your brand," Burke writes, "no one can take it away from you." Your digital brand is a conversation about your book that builds your community one relationship at a time. By following Burke's expert advice, any author can conquer the Internet and still get their next manuscript in on time.

Author Bio

Fauzia Burke is the founder and president of FSB Associates, an online publicity and marketing firm specializing in creating awareness for books and authors. She's the author of Online Marketing for Busy Authors (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, April 2016). Fauzia has promoted the books of authors such as Alan Alda, Arianna Huffington, Deepak Chopra, Melissa Francis, S. C. Gwynne, Mika Brzezinski, Charles Spencer and many more. A nationally recognized speaker and online branding expert, Fauzia writes for the Huffington Post, Maria Shriver and MindBodyGreen. For online marketing, book publishing and social media advice, follow Fauzia on Twitter (@FauziaBurke) and Facebook (Fauzia S. Burke). For more information on the book, please visit: www.FauziaBurke.com.

Endorsements

Authors

"Fauzia delivered more than I imagined was possible, plus she's fun to work with."
-- Alan Alda, award winning actor and author of two New York Times bestsellers

"I've known Fauzia for over twenty years, and I can honestly say that no one knows more about the ins and outs of online marketing for books. Fauzia gives authors the practical advice they need to find as wide an audience as possible for their books."

-- R. J. Palacio, author of The New York Times bestseller, Wonder

"Fauzia Burke is intelligent, well connected, and effective. With her considered online publicity campaigns, she reaches the parts of the media that conventional PR either doesn't understand, or wrongly ignores."

-- Charles Spencer, author of Killers of the King and other bestselling books

"In these days, an author needs a steady, capable guide to navigate the many difficulties of getting books seen and heard. Fauzia Burke and her small but mighty team offer not only smart thinking when it comes to online marketing but support and friendship every step of the way. Fauzia's hands-on and kind approach works and the steps she has outlined in her book will help any author build a base of readers.
She's simply the best."

-- Jan Jarboe Russell, author of The New York Times Bestseller The Train To Crystal City

"Fauzia creativity and diligent commitment to online publicity and social media are unsurpassed. Unequivocally, she is the premier "Go-To" online marketer."

-- Former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, author of We Can All Do Better

Publishers

"Fauzia Burke has been on the web promoting books from the very beginning, and I have consistently admired her perfect balance of creativity with practicality. She knows exactly what kinds of web promotion will drive book sales, and doesn't waste your time or money with distractions. She gets results, and is also a pleasure to work with."
-- Madeline McIntosh, President, Penguin Random House

"Fauzia Burke was talking about online marketing years before the rest of us even knew what that meant, and she continues to lead the way.  We should consider ourselves lucky that she is as generous in sharing her hard-won knowledge as she is ahead of the curve in gaining it."
-- Bob Miller, President and Publisher of Flatiron Books/Macmillan

"Always innovative and effective, I have no reservations in recommending Fauzia Burke."
-- Judith Curr, President and Publisher, Atria Publishing Group/Simon & Schuster

"Fauzia Burke knows better than anyone how to utilize the broad and sometimes confusing array of digital marketing tools on behalf of books."
-- Walter Weintz, Chief Marketing & Sales Officer, Workman Publishing

"Fauzia Burke is one of the most innovative marketing experts in the publishing industry. Her tireless dedication to her clients, paired with her tenacity for exploring new marketing opportunities, is unmatched in my view. Her arsenal is highly sought after and she brings positive, pragmatic, and powerful expertise to any author's table."
-- Kate Rados, Director, Community Development for The Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

Agents

"With her industry savvy, creative thinking, passion for online PR and brand development, and boundless energy, Fauzia is a true asset to any author."
-- Sandra Dijkstra – Literary Agent and Founder of Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency

"When it comes to publicizing a book on the web, nobody has the range and expertise of Fauzia Burke."
-- Larry J. Kirshbaum – Literary Agent with The Waxman Leavell Literary Agency

"Fauzia Burke is an industry leader in the world of online publicity and marketing . I have recommended Fauzia to many clients, with total confidence , and they have all been thrilled with the results."
-- Wendy Sherman, Literary Agent and Founder of Wendy Sherman Associates

"Armed with years of experience, Fauzia has been successfully pioneering the world of online marketing to help authors connect with their readers, and produce terrific, long lasting results."
-- Amy Hughes, Literary Agent with Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency 

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Going into the City

Portrait of a Critic as a Young Man
by Robert Christgau
Dey Street Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

One of our great essayists and journalists—the Dean of American Rock Critics, Robert Christgau—takes us on a heady tour through his life and times in this vividly atmospheric and visceral memoir that is both a love letter to a New York long past and a tribute to the transformative power of art.

Lifelong New Yorker Robert Christgau has been writing about pop culture since he was twelve and getting paid for it since he was twenty-two, covering rock for Esquire in its heyday and personifying the music beat at the Village Voice for over three decades. Christgau listened to Alan Freed howl about rock ‘n’ roll before Elvis, settled east of Manhattan’s Avenue B forty years before it was cool, witnessed Monterey and Woodstock and Chicago ’68, and the first abortion speak-out. He’s caught Coltrane in the East Village, Muddy Waters in Chicago, Otis Redding at the Apollo, the Dead in the Haight, Janis Joplin at the Fillmore, the Rolling Stones at the Garden, the Clash in Leeds, Grandmaster Flash in Times Square, and every punk band you can think of at CBGB.

Christgau chronicled many of the key cultural shifts of the last half century and revolutionized the cultural status of the music critic in the process. Going Into the City is a look back at the upbringing that grounded him, the history that transformed him, and the music, books, and films that showed him the way. Like Alfred Kazin’s A Walker in the City, E. B. White’s Here Is New York, Joseph Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel, and Patti Smith’s Just Kids, it is a loving portrait of a lost New York. It’s an homage to the city of Christgau’s youth from Queens to the Lower East Side—a city that exists mostly in memory today. And it’s a love story about the Greenwich Village girl who roamed this realm of possibility with him.

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