Böcker av Lawrence Russell

Informative. Smart. Outrageous. Outlaw Academic is Lawrence Russell's latest collection of reminiscences & reviews & rants from his 30 years as a playwright, novelist, rock musician, creative writing professor & audio magazine publisher in Victoria, BC, Canada... What can you expect? A swag bag of tempting topics written in Russell's irascible style... it's autobiography and insight as LR casts his gaze on (1) Movies (his personal history and essays on 64 of them from Hollywood, Film Noir, Neo-Noir, The Italians, TV Drama), (2) Literature (his career and notes on 20 novels), and (3) Music & Media (LR's rock past, plus fascinating profiles on "hipsters" like Chet Baker, Keith Richards and Adolf Hitler the painter). Large scale, full colour, jammed with photos -- and Russell's unique approach to enhancing your appreciation of these famous and not-so-famous cultural works. Fascinating, funny, fraught with opinion -- it's a thought-provoking journey well worth the paltry price of admission.

In the Fall of 1938 a young Canadian called Thorsen boards an ocean liner in New York heading for Rio. Who is he? An innocent dupe sent on a dangerous adventure, a chump who only survives because he has the coveted 'Aryan look'? Or maybe he's something else -- a smooth soldier of fortune, easy with women, guns, radios and the inexorable force of history? "The pursuit of food is the pursuit of intelligence," says Colonel Powell, a sophisticated American WW 1 veteran who might be doing more than just surveying coffee plantations. Rogues and ideologues, spies and gangsters, samba girls and models, refugees and paramilitary squads... Brazil 1939 under the Estado Novo, which looks to Germany and Italy for its cultural inspiration while trying to hedge its political fortune by playing them off against the Gringo Axis. The raw tropical landscape of mid-century Brazil allows the narrative to become paranormal, like forgotten events intruding from a parallel universe. A killer jungle cat prowls the lush gardens of the fascist elite and the slums of the radicalized poor. A death squad hunts a voodoo gang in the local rainforest. German spies attempt to establish a radio network. A Canadian agent disseminates comic book pornography in order to embarrass President Vargas and the Estado Novo. Miss Berlin tries to make a living as a magician's assistant, later as a model in Rio. A local aviatrix sells Italian fighter planes. Nazi SS soldiers fight with Soviet headhunter proxies in the Amazon jungle. The Sigma Corporation rents the last Zeppelin airship. Murder, mayhem, exotic romance: this is Radio Brazil, 1939.

Affairs of State tells the story of a young woman who, at 19 years of age, goes to work for her state's senate and falls in love. The experience begins an unexpected romantic journey as a "mistress" that lasts for 25 years.The story's setting is a state capitol in the south where the naive young woman meets many people involved in government and politics. She learns about how laws are made, about state politics and the unforeseen thrills and disappointments of love. The legislature of the 1960s was different from today's legislature and yet, in many ways the same.This is the epic of one young woman's journey into an unplanned and unanticipated but interesting life around a legislature.