Louis Armstrong: Master of ModernismBy Thomas Brothers (Norton, 608 pages, $39.95) Duke: A Life of Duke EllingtonBy Terry Teachout(Gotham, 496 pages, $30) When I discovered jazz in the small Michigan town of my youth, it became for me a defining personality…

Maureen Dowd got really, really high. The New York Times columnist ate a legal marijuana candy bar in Denver while covering the “social revolution rocking Colorado.” Though she didn’t feel anything at first, soon the writer had to crawl into…

The Internet nostalgia machine has donated over $2.5 million dollars to Reading Rainbow’s LeVar Burton to restart the PBS series that originally ran from 1983 until 2006. Burton’s Kickstarter campaign was looking for a $1 million dollar goal and promises…

Merriam-Webster has just announced the words—150 of them—that will be added to the newest edition of their abridged Collegiate Dictionary. Editor Peter Sokolowski says that “many of these new words show the impact of online connectivity to our lives and…