Bücher von Toure

His name is Touré--just Touré--and like many of the musicians, athletes, and celebrities he's profiled, he has affected the way that we think about culture in America. He has profiled Eminem, 50 Cent, and Alicia Keys for the cover of Rolling Stone. He's played high-stakes poker with Jay-Z and basketball with Prince and Wynton Marsalis. In Touré's world, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. sits beside Condoleezza Rice who sits beside hip-hop pioneer Tupac Shakur, and all of them are fascinating company.Never Drank the Kool-Aid is the chronicle of Touré's unparalleled journey through the American funhouse called pop culture. Its rooms are filled with creative, arrogant, kind, ordinary, and extraordinary people, most of whom happen to be famous. It is Touré's gift to be able to see through the artifice of their world and understand the genuine motivations behind their achievements--to see who they truly are as people. This is a searingly funny, surprisingly unguarded, and deeply insightful look at a world few of us comprehend.

This inspired collection of stories is cause for celebration. With stunning language and dazzling characters, Toure introduces Soul City -- a wholly imagined utopia where magic happens and black is beautiful. In a broad range of characterization and styles, The Portable Promised Land is filled with lighthearted humor and heavyhearted issues. Toure challenges form and what's considered politically correct in stories like The Sad, Sweet Story of Sugar Lips Shinehot and Afrolexicolgy: Today's Bi-Annual List of the Top 50 Words in African America. The Portable Promised Land marks the entrance of a new and wildly compelling voice to fiction.

Following in the footsteps of the late great Lester Bangs -- the most revered and irreverent of rock 'n' roll critics -- twenty-four celebrated writers have penned stories inspired by great songs. Just as Bangs cast new light on a Rod Stewart classic with his story "e;Maggie May,"e; about a wholly unexpected connection between an impressionable young man and an aging, alcoholic hooker, the diverse, electrifying stories here use songs as a springboard for a form dubbed the lit riff. Alongside Bangs's classic work, you'll find stories by J.T. LeRoy, who puts a recovering teenage drug abuser in a dentist's chair with nothing but the Foo Fighters's "e;Everlong"e; -- blaring through the P.A. -- to fight the pain; Jonathan Lethem, whose narrator looks back on his lost innocence just as an extramarital affair careens to an end -- this to the tune "e;Speeding Motorcycle"e; as recorded by Yo La Tengo; and Jennifer Belle, who envisions a prequel to Paul Simon's "e;Graceland"e; -- one that takes place at a children's birthday party replete with a real live kangaroo. With original contributions from Tom Perrotta, Nelson George, Amanda Davis, Lisa Tucker, Aimee Bender, Darin Strauss, and many more -- riffing on everyone from Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen to the White Stripes, Cat Power, and Bob Marley -- this is both an astounding collection of short stories and an extraordinary experiment in words and music. Soundtrack available from Saturation Acres Music & Recording Co.