A sample of my recent music and reading. An album links to its review on All Music; a book to its customer reviews on Amazon.

Recent Albums:

• Pete Yorn — Back & Forth
• Green Day — 21st Century Breakdown
• The Decemberists — The Hazards of Love
• Bob Dylan — Together Through Life
• Jack’s Mannequin — The Glass Passenger
• Elbow — Leaders of the Free World
• Sun Kil Moon — April
• The National — Alligator
• Shivaree — I Oughta Give You A Shot in the Head for Making Me Live in This Dump
• The Mountain Goats — Tallahassee
• Fleet Foxes — Sun Giant
• Cloud Cult — Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes)

Recent Books:

• Benjamin Franklin — Autobiography
• Edward J. Larson — A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign
• James L. Swanson — Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase For Lincoln’s Killer
• Laurence Bergreen — Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe
• Sumbul Ali-Karamali — The Muslim Next Door: The Qur’an, the Media, and that Veil Thing
• Andy Gill & Kevin Odegard — A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — A Study in Scarlet; The Sign of Four; The Hound of the Baskervilles; The Valley of Fear
• Harold Sinclair — The Horse Soldiers: A Novel of the Civil War
• Gontran de Poncins — Kabloona
• Jared Diamond — Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
• Barbara Tuchman — The Guns of August
• Nathaniel Philbrick — In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex