Music of Steve Reich November 28 & 29 New England Conservatory 290 Huntington Avenue More information Last year around this time, cultural centers in Steve Reich's native New York were celebrating the composer's 70th birthday. Reich has been publishing music since 1963, and it is impossible to imagine the American musical landscape without him. Bostonians have a chance to wish Reich a happy 71st. The New England Conservatory will present a series of concerts Wednesday......

Senator Edward M. Kennedy has just signed an agreement with Grand Central Publishing to write his memoirs. According to the AP, he reportedly will receive money along the lines of $8 or $9 million, similar to what Hillary Clinton and Tony Blair got for their memoirs. NYT is saying it will be $8 million. As if he needs the money. The high advance suggests that Kennedy might actually talk about the juicy stuff--drinking, Joan, Chappaquiddick......

The American Idea First Parish Church Meetinghouse, 3 Church Street, Harvard Square (Corner of Mass. Ave. and Church St.) Friday, October 19th, 7:00 pm, $5 More info There are a lot of things you could do to celebrate your 150th anniversary. For a magazine, publishing a book seems like a good idea: anthologize the best of your magazine writing in a more permanent format so it can be remembered for all time. And that's just......

Now that it's fall and writers are stepping out for tours, we'll be offering a spotlight on the best of the week's readings. You'll still see book reviews and interviews with authors, but "Authorial Intent" will help you get the jump on tickets so you don't wind up out in the cold. Also, it's impossible to read everything, so please e-mail Bostonist if "Authorial Intent" misses anything. Thursday, September 6, 7:00 pm, Robert Whitcomb and......

Update: Schneider has just resigned as Provincetown's administrative director of tourism. No matter how good of a fiction writer you are, you don't want to lie to or about Oprah Winfrey because the wrath of Oprah will bite you in the ass. Bill Schneider, an author and P-Town's administrative director of tourism, might be feeling that wrath soon after he got caught lying that his book was picked by Oprah's book club. Schneider really threw......

Former MIT professor and business whiz John Donovan Sr. has been found guilty for staging his own shooting in 2005, wasting a hell of a lot of Cambridge's time, and irritating state Attorney General Martha Coakley. Supposedly, his motive for such weird behavior was that he wanted to get revenge on his son by saying his son had hired Russian hit men to kill him. Donovan went on trial last week for filing a false......

Will the real Fake Steve Jobs please stand up? Yes, he will. And he'll do it in Boston. The New York Times outed the blogger who's been blogging as a Steve Jobs iMpersonator (can we trademark that?) for over a year. His real name Daniel Lyons a Medford resident. He's been impersonating the Apple chief and lampooning his persona on the blog fakesteve.blogspot.com. In the last year it's gotten the attention of the tech elite......

LAist was comped front row seats by the Dodgers due to Malingering being struck by a foul ball last week, and she came back with some great photos, and earlier made fun of 4th of July on Venice Beach. But the biggest stories of the week was that the Mayor's Hot Tamale was revealed, and that a Kwik-E-Mart was erected in Burbank. Phillyist was busy doing the Fourth of July up right, exercising their......

First it was Mitt Romney. Then it was the Five Brothers. Now Mitt Romney's spouse and former Massachusetts First Lady Ann Romney might be publishing her thoughts in a book. Ann Romney seems like a nice enough person. The Globe describes her as "sunny and cheerful," despite dealing with multiple sclerosis. And she must be putting up with a lot after L'Affaire Station Wagon. We're not going after her because she's not the one......

Sherman Alexie will read Thursday, June 7, at 6:00 PM at the Brattle Theatre. Tickets are $2 and available at Porter Square Books. Now - this event is sold out - but do what you gotta do. Novelist, poet, blogger, and serious NBA fan Sherman Alexie's latest book went straight to paperback. That's not a big deal, but it became a big deal to Alexie when Jenny Shank, a reviewer, wondered if the book went......

Did you know there was an election today? Bill Linehan and Susan Passoni are up for the late Jimmy Kelly's District 2 seat on the City Council, which represents South Boston, South End, and Chinatown. Their Backgrounds Linehan: Lifelong City Hall employee. More South Boston than South End. Passoni: Used to be a financial analyst. More South End than South Boston. Insider/Outsider Status Linehan: Insider thanks to the City Hall pedigree. Passoni: Outsider Moving City......

The Hoax could have been a terrific movie. Whether or not you know anything about Howard "The Aviator" Hughes or Clifford Irving, the man who tried to pass off a fake autobiography of Hughes, the plot is riveting and familiar. In the light of recent publishing and journalism faux-pas, ranging from Jayson Blair to the sudden squelching of OJ Simpson's "confession," Clifford Irving's desperate drive for fame makes sense. Richard Gere stars as Clifford Irving,......

Bridie Clark will be reading at the Harvard Coop Thursday, March 8, at 7:00 pm. Bridie Clark is one brave woman. The Harvard alum recently released the chick-lit book Because She Can. It's a Devil Wears Prada-esque tale of a good-hearted but ambitious young woman who falls into the claws of a ruthless exec. The ruthless exec in Bridie Clark's debut novel might seem awfully familiar to book fans. Vivian Grant is the head of......

Did you see how there was another weird, but harmless, device spotted and destroyed on city streets this morning? And it didn't cause a fuss? Apparently it was a "traffic-counting device" or "pedestrian counter." Whatever it was, at least it didn't give Boston residents the finger. Police nabbed the teenagers who stabbed another teenager at the Back Bay T stop. It was inevitable that they were going to get caught. It appears to have been......

The Littlest Bar shuttered the doors last year after a prolonged closing. What remains in the Littlest spot is a gutted construction site (though you can still see the mirror behind the bar and wood paneling) for a set of upscale condos being constructed at the downtown location. On January 30 Tir na nOg in Somerville will be the latest Irish bar casualty to gentrification in the area. The Brendan Beehan may now be able......

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to. In Austin, bands are beginning to confirm for SXSW and the rumor mill is up and running. Good thing, too, because we all know how much Austinites love live performances. Austin also found itself in the national spotlight, with Longhorn Legend......

The tech bubble may be back. Or maybe it's not a bubble at all. Reddit (as in read – it) grew up as part of the Boston post-burst venture capital projects. Conde Nast just bought them. They're one of any number of link sharing sites allowing users to popularize blog entries and websites they find to be interesting and relevant. The back end software learns what you like by the way you vote on existing......

We're not talking publishing here – we're talking Brit Rock. The post-punk revival has brought Editors into the public eye with their album infused with sounds of some greats like Joy Division, Doves, and Echo and the Bunnymen. They caused quite a buzz last year when they hit the world with their debut album "The Back Room." They're out on a world tour now, appeasing UK audiences who can't seem to stop clamoring for more.......

We haven't seen South End Sara rolling down the street yet – but she's out there somewhere. Mayor Menino was the dignitary on hand to christen the rainbow adorned duck boat. This short and shaky video certainly isn't of the best quality, though it's proof positive that Menino was there, even if his bottle breaking proficiency needs polishing. Sara sailed for the Youth Pride march in mid-May and sailed again as part of the Pride......

Oh it’s been a doozy of a week for Harvard sophomore, Kaavya Viswanathan, since her college paper, the Crimson, first reported that her novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, is just a bit too similar to author Megan F. McCafferty’s novels. At first, Viswanathan told the media that she had “no idea what they are talking about” and then went about her normal life as a Harvard co-ed. Of......

While Bostonist constantly struggles to get you the latest news here in the city, we like to think that we’ve got our act together (somewhat)…that is until we read about someone much younger who has accomplished something that we some day hope to. Last week, we read an article from the A.P. Wire about a Harvard student, Kaavya Viswanathan, who at age 17, signed a two-book deal with publishing house Little, Brown for a reported......

While the real baseball season hasn’t even started yet, all Sox fans have been eyeing new Yankee Johnny Damon ever since that first press conference with his long locks chopped off for Steinbrenner’s organization. There hasn’t been much to comment on since Damon just recently returned to the lineup after sitting out since March 10th with a shoulder injury. (Not that it wasn’t a bit fun to see the replay of him missing that first......

Just as you're coming down from the high of celebrating the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., along comes the birth date of another great American, and this time it's one of Boston's own. Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706 - 300 years ago! - on what is now Milk Street, right here in the Hub (although the man who would give Boston that nickname wouldn't be born for another 103 years). Philly......

Bostonist loves a good book and we find extra comfort when that good book is written by a local Boston author. To help celebrate Picador Publishing's 10th anniversary in the literary world, they have offered up some free books to you readers out there. Who is this oh-so-generous publishing house, you might ask? Well, Picador is an imprint of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, and has published some of Bostonist's favorite novels (The Corrections, Running With......

Morning Stories is one of the oldest podcasts today and the first public radio podcast. With this show on the web not long after the term podcast was coined, Tony Kahn beat many people to publishing online. Morning Stories is a collection of weird, interesting, and engaging stories from people's lives. Tony Kahn bring these stories to an audience to help them see how other people live and to tell their life stories. Tony Kahn......

It seems that the University of New Hampshire should hire a better printer or something the next time they publish their annual alumni book. It was announced yesterday that the 2005 version of the UNH Alumni Directory mistakenly listed 500 of its alumni as deceased. The Dallas publishing company, PCI, made the unfortunate error but printed 2,000 copies of the book without realizing it (did they not have a proofreader on hand?). Of course, when......

These days, Bostonist has noticed much talking-head time devoted to journalists' right to keep their sources confidential (if, in fact, such a right exists). Apparently, Senate President Robert Travaglini has also noticed, as he proposed a bill yesterday that would provide solid legal protection to journalists (as opposed to the less-than-certain First Amendment protection they've had to rely on up until now). Being pseudo-journalists ourselves, Bostonist tends to think this proposal is a good idea......

Bostonist has been tangentially aware and thoroughly admiring of Jessica Hopper's writing since college and discovered that, among other things, Hopper was publishing the funny-as-hell Hit It Or Quit It music zine and writing a column in Punk Planet, alongside reading tour-mate Al Burian. Hopper's on the up and up and last year, her fantastic essay "Emo: Where The Girls Aren't" was featured in Da Capo's Best Music Writing 2004. Her byline is featured in......

Having once worked for a labor union, Bostonist knows that relations between workers and management can get more than a little tense. But we were impressed with the audacity of Harborside Healthcare: The Boston company is challenging the results of a union election, saying that the voting was not fair because a union organizer threatened to use voodoo on healthcare workers (most of whom are Haitian) if they didn't vote for the union. Bostonist's......

It seems lately all the corporate heavyweights that have traditionally been associated with our city have been abandoning us: FleetBoston, Gillette, and Filene's to name a few. Luckily, most of these departures/foldings have centered around bastions of corporate finance and excessive consumerism (c'mon, who really needs a Mach3Turbo?), while Boston's traditional cultural icons have remained steadfast...until now. The publishers of the Atlantic Monthly have announced that the 148 year-old Boston-born journal of cultural and political......