From the Stacks: September 8, 2006

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Utne receives some 1,200 magazines, newsletters, journals, weeklies, and zines. Add in hundreds of books, CDs, and DVDs, and it's a flood of media that lines the walls of our library and piles high on our desks. All the ideas, people, and stories inspire lively daily chatter, but they can't all fit into our bimonthly magazine. So we share the gems here in our weekly editions of 'From the Stacks.' Check in every Friday for the freshest highlights of the independent and alternative media.

Issue #27 of Stop Smiling pays tribute to that vast expanse of the United States often overlooked (or over-flown) by its coastal peer publications -- the Midwest. The magazine celebrates the 'Third Coast's' cultural contributions in interviews with Kurt Vonnegut, Garrison Keillor, Dave Eggers, and a range of other hip musicians, designers, and writers. Essays and reviews honor the region's cultural and historical institutions (Detroit's Grande Ballroom, Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, and St. Paul's Saints, to name a few). Happily, this lovely ode to the Midwest moves beyond the prairie-born bigwigs one might expect: icons such as Bob Dylan and Smokey Robinson are not forgotten here, but there is also plenty of space for lesser-knowns to roam. -- Danielle Maestretti

With the exception of the occasional anti-Harry Potter outburst, book banning has skulked around 21st century US bookshelves relatively quietly. Internationally, however, censorship of literature is still a hot topic. The September/October 'Censorship Issue' of World Literature Today travels the globe from Albania to Zimbabwe and back to the United States to find out how, why, and where politics, religion, and language spur the repression of freedom of expression. Excerpts from banned novels, articles on country-specific censorship issues, and banned-book reviews dovetail with fascinating tidbits like the '10 Most Censored Countries.' -- Elizabeth Oliver

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print