The Stud Files

What does one do with 80 dog-pee-stained boxes of musty manuscripts, sexual paraphernalia, letters to Gertrude Stein and a reliquary holding a shock of Valentino’s pubic hair? If you’re biographer Justin Spring, you turn it into a hefty yet eminently entertaining social history, Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade

Hedd of the Class

Underground comics were once the bastard stepchild of the industry. More about drugs and sex than superheroes, these mangy rags were sold at your local head shop or some other disreputable vendor. These days though they get their due as actual art, and their slouch towards respectability gets a big boost with Fantagraphics Books’ The Artist Himself: A Rand Holmes Retrospective (o

Reading Rewind

We're still talking about these three books — our favorite beach reads of 2010.    Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield’s memoir Talking to Girls About Duran Duran (out now) is a journey back to our favorite decade as he winds through his angst-filled adolescence to the tunes of Culture Club, Kajagoogoo, and, of course, Duran Duran. Sheffield’s touching 2007 best-seller Love is a

Hungry Like The Wolf

A trip to the movies these days can feel like the Back to the Future DeLorean dumped you back in the ‘80s. Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield’s memoir Talking to Girls About Duran Duran (out July 15) does the same to much greater — and more personal — effect as he winds through his angst-filled adolescence to the tunes of Culture Club, Kajagoogoo, and, of course, Duran Duran.   S

The Mean Reds

From the perspective of 2010, Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s seems simply spunky and kinda zany. But in 1959, when the film adaptation of Truman Capote’s book was being cast, her money-for-lifestyle exchange with men was not viewed so favorably. "Oh, Martin," Audrey Hepburn told producer Martin Jurow, "you have a wonderful script, but I can’t play a hooker." That push

An Addictive Read 

In the days since crack cocaine was introduced as the scourge of the inner city, its danger quotient has somehow gotten defused, reduced to the punch line of a joke about Whitney Houston ("crack is whack") or an alternate name for our favorite gadget (the Crackberry). But Bill Clegg brings its devastating reality back to the fore in his tragically beautiful new memoir Portrait of