The world’s biggest sporting event comes to North America. Outrageous ticket prices, security concerns, and predictions of extreme heat have dogged the lead-up to this year’s World Cup. All the more reason to watch from home or, better yet, a fan-filled bar. Matches start on June 11, as 15th-ranked Mexico takes on South Africa in Mexico City. The U.S., ranked 16th, kicks off in Los Angeles the next evening against Paraguay. Saturday’s hot matchup is between Brazil (6th) and Morocco (8th), while Sunday sees the debut of Germany (10th) and the Netherlands (7th).
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by Joshua Kendall

The new Garry Trudeau biography is, compared with the comic strip he’s known for, “not as sophisticated, in tone and content,” said Dwight Garner in The New York Times. But while it’s merely “a meat-and-potatoes biography,” it “has a good story to tell,” and “I devoured it in two or three sittings, as if it were an ideal bag of popcorn.” Trudeau, now 77, is a hero to many because, beginning with the first syndicated appearance of Doonesbury in 1970, he “dragged a knowing hippie sensibility onto the playground of the comics pages.” For decades, his strips were “a daily confirmation of one’s sanity,” and he’s been just as sharp since slowing in 2014 to a Sunday-only publication schedule. He is, as this book reveals, a short guy who shot up at age 17 but who “never forgot what being a short guy was like.”

Author Joshua Kendall traces Trudeau’s life back to its origins — “a childhood marked by both immense privilege and a quiet, defining trauma,” said David Smith in The Guardian. Trudeau grew up in an upstate New York town essentially built by his great-grandfather, but his mother left the family when Garry was 10, and he battled depression and towering bullies when he was sent away to prep school. But an inspiring teacher helped him express himself through art, and after he entered Yale in 1966, he started a comic strip in the student paper that evolved into Doonesbury. By the mid-1970s, he’d won a Pulitzer Prize and was carried in newspapers with a total readership of 60 million, and he’d graduated from lampooning jocks and preppies to calling out Richard Nixon’s criminality. In 1980, he married Today show co-host Jane Pauley. 

“Kendall reminds us of the many times that Doonesbury was more than just a comic strip,” said Alex Beam in The Boston Globe. A moving chapter details Trudeau’s deep immersion in the experiences of wounded combat veterans, a group he honored when one of the strip’s original characters, the footballer B.D., lost a leg fighting in the Iraq War. At other times, Trudeau has drawn anger or censorship, as when he created the funny pages’ first openly gay character or spoofed new state limits on abortions. Though Kendall persuaded the famously reclusive Trudeau to answer some biographical questions, the author offers little insight about his subject’s emotional life, leaving “a yawning hole” in his account. Still, the book is “a warm and fuzzy romp for Baby Boomers” and “a perfect biography for Trudeau: respectful, informative, and none too intrusive — just the way he would want it.”

The saxophone colossus who reshaped jazz 

In 1959, Sonny Rollins was at the peak of his fame and widely viewed as the greatest living jazz improviser. But that summer, the 28-year-old saxophonist suddenly stopped performing. For the next two years, Rollins began improvising on his own, playing rain or shine for up to 15 hours a stretch on New York City’s Williamsburg Bridge, far from the ears of complaining neighbors. A self-critical perfectionist, he felt he needed time to find his own style, as his friend and rival John Coltrane had done. The result was The Bridge, Rollins’ pioneering 1962 album recorded with guitar accompaniment instead of piano, full of lyrical pieces that showcased his ability to build musical narratives. He would go on to be known as America’s greatest living jazz musician, with a career that spanned seven decades. “A lot of people couldn’t comprehend why I would stop playing,” he said in 2001. “But I learned something. It was necessary for me to do to have the kind of confidence I need to play music like this.”

Born in Harlem in 1930, when legends like Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, and Louis Armstrong lived in the neighborhood, Rollins was “always fascinated by music,” said The Washington Post. His mother bought him a sax when he was 7, and he grew up idolizing swing-era greats like Coleman Hawkins and Louis Jordan. But his musical awakening came with the rise of saxophonist Charlie Parker, whose fast tempos and intricate harmonies kicked off the “bebop revolution.” Like Parker, Rollins had a bout with heroin addiction, but he went through rehab in 1955 and rededicated himself to music. He could improvise “intricate melodies without sounding trite or ostentatiously avant-garde” and then, for a ballad, soften his tone “to velvet.”

“Getting clean helped spur an astonishing burst of creativity,” said The Guardian (U.K.). In the 1950s alone, Rollins released 18 albums, including the 1956 landmark Saxophone Colossus. In the following decades, he experimented with other genres such as calypso, funk, and R&B, and played on several songs from the Rolling Stones’ Tattoo You, including “Waiting on a Friend.” With his “muscular sound, idiosyncratic solos, and consistent experimentation,” Rollins was endlessly versatile and in demand, said The Times (U.K.). Yet he was often reclusive, disappearing for years on trips to India and Japan for what he described as his “spiritual quest.” Even when he retired in 2014, he was still unsatisfied with his sound. “What I’m looking for perhaps is unattainable,” he said in 2008. “But I certainly have a right to try to achieve it.”