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Jon Krakauer’s stock in trade is human behavior in the most extreme of conditions, as seen in his harrowing bestseller Into Thin Air, a firsthand account of disaster on Mount Everest. His latest book takes readers into a world that will seem as remote and forbidding, and all the more alien for existing on American … Read more

If Chuck Palahniuk seems fixated on violence and abandonment, he has good reason—his grandparents died in a murder-suicide, and his father was killed a few years ago by a jealous ex-husband. So the level of attention paid to confusion, loss, and anger in his books is totally understandable. There’s no denying the raw emotional turmoil—and … Read more

Falling in love a second time is a trip through treacherous waters—you might be able to remember where the river’s most dangerous rocks are from the first time around, but that’s no guarantee you won’t hit them again. For the title character of Tim Farrington’s The Monk Downstairs, it’s only more complex for being on … Read more

Even for an astrophysicist, Lucienne lives in a world overfilled with black holes. The heroine of N.M. Kelby’s second novel, Theater of the Stars, has just had the biggest success of her career, finding one of the mysterious, light-eating spatial anomalies. But the rest of her life is a case study in entropy. Her marriage … Read more

Some authors have an impressive body of work; Michael Sims has an impressive work on the body. His Adam’s Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form is both informative and entertainingly digressive. Taking stock of his subject literally from head to toe, Sims offers a remarkably thorough catalog of our body parts, … Read more

Despite the barely noticed building boom that’s spreading faster than scandal through residential sections of downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul—especially along the suddenly vogue Mississippi River—there are no serious office buildings in the works. Where are the new skyscrapers? The last major high-rise built here was U.S. Bank Place, finished in 1992. Perhaps a more … Read more

In his 1653 book The Compleat Angler, Izaak Walton declared the carp the queen of the rivers, and the species is still highly regarded as an angling prize in Britain and the rest of Europe. Anglers on this side of the pond still reject the monarchy, and the carp is generally regarded as a trash … Read more

Why should March 17 be the only time the local Irish cut loose, especially in Paddy-friendly St. Paul? Hence this annual weekend of green partying. A significant percentage of the local Irish music scene will be out in force to help keep it reel, joined by headliners Leahy—nine fiddle-crazy Ontario siblings—and the Pogues-y combo of … Read more

Weldon Johnson underwent a triple bypass on April 1. Twenty days later, his rooster was gone. “It sure didn’t help his recovery any,” said his daughter, Colleen Johnson, when The Rake discussed the incident with her. Mr. Johnson first installed the nine-foot fiberglass rooster in front of his Two Harbors gift shop in 1965. Prior … Read more