Wes Phillips

Father Athanasius Kircher explains just about everything—and the pictures are gorgeous.

Wow, Mark Steyn is even crankier than I am.

"'Music's first offering, an eclectic, disparate, but mostly functional compendium of influences from 5000 B.C. to present day, hints that this trend's time may not only have fully arrived, but is already on the wane,' [editor in chief Ryan] Schreiber wrote. 'If music has any chance of keeping our interest, it's going to have to move beyond the same palatable but predictable notes, meters, melodies, tonalities, atonalities, timbres, and harmonies.'"

Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head: The Beatles Records and the Sixties is, quite simply, the best book ever published about the Beatles and their music. Its first half is the best description of the '60s I've ever read; its second half is a track by track exploration of the songs and the process of recording them. It's out of print in the USA, but there's a new edition available in the UK and it can be ordered from the link. Do yourself a favor and read this book if the Beatles mean anything to you at all.

According to Sam Anderson, "To the millions of us flitting around the edges of hipness, he is our Geek Bard, our Troubadork."

B. R. Myers didn't like Denis Johnson's National Book Award winning Tree of Smoke much.

The feature length movie (link is to trailer) has become the "most viewed film in Finland," having been seen by three million people in the last 60 days.