National Network for Equitable Library Service

We're all prone to excess, even in discussions of excess, observes biologist and science writer Marlene Zuk. This year has been marked by another rainfall of books about humans destroying the environment in which they evolved, a few about the a priori Darwinian mismatch between humans and their so-called "natural" environments, and a great many more about the even greater mismatch between humans and their constructed environments.

As any historian or casual observer of urban transformation might tell you, walls are not everlasting. The following collection examines different ways monuments and notions of monumentality in art and architecture exist in relation to this reality. From Esther Yi's chronicle of the uncertain fate of a section of the Berlin Wall known as the East Side Gallery, to Michael Z. Wise's essay on the Casa Malaparte in Capri, the articles collected in this month's LARB Digital Edition examine the powerful sway of the monumental on our common sense.

This month's Digital Edition serves up eight irresistible courses from LARB's Food and Drink section. Including a taste of the dizzying heights of gourmandise in John McIntyre's essay "Finer Dining Through Chemistry," and samples of extreme foodie-ism in Douglas Bauer's review of Anything that Moves by Dana Goodyear; with John T. Scott's review of American Whiskey, Bourbon & Rye: A Guide to the Nation's Favorite Spirit as an aperitif, and a bonus interview with Leslie Stephens, author of Compromise Cake: Lessons Learned From My Mother's Recipe Box, for dessert.

A collection of essays on the topic of the law and legal affairs, selected in order to give readers samples of the ways in which the subject of law relates to the study of ourselves and our times. Those included in this publication are just a sample of the books reviewed over the last year and a half - reviews that cover a variety of topics, some very current, some historical and some dealing with debates spanning centuries. A review of Judge Wilkinson's Cosmic Constitutional Theory surveys the leading theories of the Constitution and how to interpret it.

In the summer of 2009, Miranda July was struggling to finish writing the screenplay for her much-anticipated second film. During her increasingly long lunch breaks, she began to obsessively read the PennySaver, the iconic classifieds booklet that reached everywhere and seemed to come from nowhere. Who was the person selling the "Large leather Jacket, $10"' It seemed important to find out'or at least it was a great distraction from the screenplay.

"The days of poets moping around castle steps wearing black capes is over. The poets of today are amplified." - LEONARD COHEN Picking up where Samuel Johnson left off more than two centuries ago, Ray Robertson's Lives of the Poets (with Guitars) offers up an amplified gathering of thirteen portraits of rock & roll, blues, folk, and alt-country's most inimitable artists. Irreverent and riotous, Robertson explores the "greater or lesser heat" with which each musician shaped their genre, while offering absorbing insight into their often tumultuous lives.

'The streets are full of admirable craftsmen, but so few practical dreamers.' - Man Ray What if there were movies made the same way as suits, custom fitted, each one tailored for one person' Not broadcast, but narrowcast' Not theatres around the world showing the same globalized pictures, but instead a local circumstance, a movie so particular, so peculiar, it could cure night blindness or vertigo' Welcome to the world of fringe movies, where artists have been busy putting queer shoulders to the wheels, or bending light to talk about First Nations rights (and making it funny at the same tim

Everybody loves the movies. But a movie about the colour blue, or an isolated mountain range, or a man grown so thin the world floats through his perfect transparency' Welcome to the strange and wonderful universe of fringe cinema. Twenty-three interviews with Canada's finest underdogs. Includes a foreword by Atom Egoyan.

Guy Maddin is one of Canada's most celebrated and original filmmakers, the director of such delirious films as Tales from the Gimli Hospital, Careful, Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary, The Saddest Music in the World and My Winnipeg. Few know, however, that he is just as gifted a writer, and his resolutely purple prose, as eccentric and enchanting as his film work, is a true delight.

The craft of craft, the art of craft - here in Canada we're just starting to really talk about these things. In March 1999, Jean Johnson, who runs Toronto's Craft Studio at Harbourfront Centre, organized a wildly successful symposium on the state of craft in Canada. Curators, writers, critics, academics and craftspeople spoke about all aspects of craft: history, practice, theory, criticism. Taken together, these papers create a clear picture of the vibrant crafts scene in Canada.