In Eating the Flowers of Paradise, Kevin Rushby tells the story of an epic trip—not just a tale of a literal intoxication, but of an emotional and intellectual obsession. A decade following a job teaching English in the Yemeni city of San’a, where Rushby first enjoyed qat, he decides to return to Yemen by way of Ethiopia, where the drug ... [ read more ]

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung collects about 350 pages of vintage essays by Lester Bangs, whose rock-critic career lasted from 1969 to his death in 1982. Musically, this coincides with heavy metal, glam rock, progressive rock, and punk. Psychotic Reactions contains essays on all of these, but discusses everyone else too, including John Coltrane, Barry White, Elvis Presley, Kraftwerk, Tangerine ... [ read more ]