Satan Is Real
by Charlie Louvin (Igniter, $23)
The story of the Louvin Brothers is “as sad a tale of country stardom as any out there,” said Wayne Bledsoe in the Knoxville News Sentinel. On stage, the old-time country duo could harmonize like no other group, but behind the scenes, theirs was a real-life Cain and Abel story—a push and pull between the straitlaced Charlie and the hard-drinking Ira that ended in breakup and tragedy. “Like their music,” this barroom-style account by Charlie, who died at 83 last January, is “classic stuff.”
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The Last Holiday
by Gil Scott-Heron (Grove, $25)
“The Last Holiday, is a singular triumph, one last act of love from the man often called ‘the godfather of hip-hop,’” said Michael Schaub in NPR.org. Gil Scott-Heron, best known for black-power political tunes, including “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” died at 62 last year, but left behind this fascinating memoir, written in “charming, unforced prose.” Unfortunately, he left out mention of his late-life struggles with addiction and HIV, and the book suffers for the lack of candor.
Fug You
by Ed Sanders (Da Capo, $27)
Ed Sanders is a bohemian polymath, said Ben Ratliff in The New York Times. Testifying at the Chicago Seven trial in 1970, he identified himself as a “poet, songwriter, leader of a rock-’n’-roll band, publisher, editor, recording artist, peace creep.” Sanders’s “funny, instructive, nourishing” new memoir recounts a life filled with countercultural wit and mischief, from his stint fronting the Fugs—a “sort-of rock band”—to running the subversive Peace Eye bookstore in New York’s Greenwich Village.
The Book of Drugs
by Mike Doughty (Da Capo, $16)
Mike Doughty knows what readers of rock memoirs want, said Steve Almond in The Boston Globe. With “lacerating candor,” the former front man for the 1990s band Soul Coughing chronicles how narcotics helped him escape the pressures of minor rock stardom but transformed him into a zombie. Doughty’s account offers an “eloquent summation of junkie life.” By the end, he “actually manages to make the Dionysian dream of rock ’n’ roll sound like a real drag.”
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Facial recognition vans and policingThe government is rolling out more live facial recognition technology across England
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Dive in! The best children's books to spark a love of readingThe Week Recommends These gripping stories will keep kids hooked until the last page
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Crossword: August 13, 2025The Week's daily crossword
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”