By Kate Vander Wiede
The Cantab, as the regulars called The Cantab Lounge, is like a quirky not-quite-speakeasy complete with a narrow stairwell leading below street level and smoke-perfumed attendees. This night, bass chords shake the ceiling, courtesy of the band headlining one floor up. Dim lights hardly illuminate the cramped room, which is lined with [...]

This enjoyable anthology of crime stories proffers a grimy ride through the murderous and creepy side of Beantown.
Boston Noir, edited by Dennis Lehane. Akashic Books, $15.95
Reviewed by Kate Vander Wiede
In the introduction of Boston Noir, editor, contributor. and best-selling novelist Dennis Lehane explains that while Aristotle “mandated that a tragic hero must fall from a [...]

Though the writing in Nothing Was the Same is often beautiful and moving, the memoir failed to fully engage me.
Nothing Was the Same by Kay Redfield Jamison, Knopf, 208 pp., $25
by Helen Epstein
In 1995, a psychology professor named Kay Redfield Jamison took the unusual step of publishing an article in her local paper, the [...]

An engaging book from a London-based journalist that sets out to illuminate a challenging slice of Jewish history.
“Emancipation: How Liberating Europe’s Jews from the Ghetto Led to Revolution and Renaissance” by Michael Goldfarb, Simon and Schuster, 408 pages, $30.00.
Reviewed by Harvey Blume
Michael Goldfarb is an American-born, London-based contributor to NPR (as well as to THE [...]

by Bill Marx

For those interested interested in the work and lives of classical musicians, or if you teach feature writing, magazine writing, cultural reporting or non-fiction narrative, the profiles in “Music Talks” make a perfect holiday gift or useful addition to the classroom.
It is a volume of 4000 word-and-under profiles of celebrated artists by resident [...]

Because of my gig at WGBH’s The World I read works in translation when I have the chance. Here’s an idiosyncratic round-up of first-rate literary stocking stuffers from around the globe.
By Bill Marx
Some of my favorite books from around the world this year raise the thorny issue of the relationship between literature new and [...]

Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare, in repertory at the Gamm Theatre, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, November 25 through December 5, 2009.
Reviewed by Caldwell Titcomb
To celebrate the start of its 25th season, the Gamm Theatre in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, is offering two Shakespeare plays in repertory: “Romeo and Juliet” and “Much [...]

The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess by Andrei Codrescu, Princeton University Press, 248 pages, $16.95.
Reviewed by Harvey Blume
In 1916, as Europe waged an horrific war that, nearly a century later, makes even less sense, if possible, than it did at the time, refugees, renegades, draft dodgers, opportunists, revolutionaries and artists massed in [...]

Whether you’re a Jungian or a Freudian, think Jung was a genius or charlatan, or even if you’re someone who’s never given much thought to psychotherapy, the exhibition on the “The Red Book” at New York City’s Rubin Museum of Art (which runs through February 15) is worth a visit.
THE RED BOOK by C.G. [...]

The “Red Book” was Jung’s attempt to understand himself as well as the structure of the human personality in general and the relation of the individual to society and the community of the dead.

THE RED BOOK by C.G. Jung. Edited by Sonu Shamdasani. English translation by Shamdasani, Mark Kyburz, and John Peck. W.W. Norton & [...]