Welcome to a super secret book issue, where you’ll find reviews, interviews, and some preview picks for events at the library, where books are relatively "free." I’ll kick things off with a rave for Blaine Dixon’s Polk Gulch (Blurb, 144 pages, $49.95), a semi-self-published collection of photos of life on one of San Francisco’s most storied streets. Blaine’s black-and-white eye is a West Coast counterpart to the Times Square views of Larry Clark and Gary Lee Boas, and the book’s final contemporary color section is packed with wise irony. Polk Gulch may not be what it once was, but Polk Gulch proves small publishing is still spirited, intelligent, and surprising. (Johnny Ray Huston)
www.blurb.com/user/Vercingtorix
>>The wayward west
America is not a freeway in Jon Raymond’s Livability
By Max Goldberg
>>This land was your land
The American West at Risk confronts mine-all-mine mentality
By Amanda Witherell
>>Speed Reading
83 Days of Radiation Sickness, The Photographs of Stanley Marcus and more
New Reviews
>>Herself redefined
The word is the thing in The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest
By Garrett Caples
>>Vive l’amour
Stephanie Young remakes icons and images in Picture Palace
By Brandon Bussolini
>>Blessed be
The Necronomicon has an expensive 31st birthday party
By Cheryl Eddy
>>Reel time travel
A book-length encounter with the criminally obscure Ulrike Ottinger
Matt Wolf