The Uncool
by Cameron Crowe
Imagine you’ve spent weeks interviewing Allman Brothers Band lead singer Gregg Allman, and then, in a paranoid rage, he takes all your tapes and threatens to destroy them. Or imagine hanging out with the notoriously press-shy David Bowie during his manic, creative, drug-fueled “Thin White Duke” phase. Now imagine all this happening when you aren’t even old enough to drive. Music journalist and screenwriter Cameron Crowe’s memoir goes beyond his many artist profiles and captures of L.A. and San Francisco in the ’70s, exposing his unique family dynamics — especially his relationship with his aphorism-spouting mom — and the kooks, mentors, and friends who gave him breaks, rides, and connections. The movie Almost Famous is a fictionalized take on young Cameron’s life, but this book gives Crowe the breathing room to describe many more of his wild rides and reflective moments.
Guilty by Definition
by Susie Dent
After writing more than a dozen books about words and English language history, Susie Dent, England’s most well-known lexicographer, decided to try her hand at fiction, and to good effect. Dent didn’t travel far from her dictionary life, though. Guilty by Definition follows a tight-knit group of lexicographers at the fictional Clarendon English Dictionary who receive coded correspondence from someone signing off as “Chorus.” The decoded messages point toward one thing: the unexplained disappearance of senior editor Martha Thornhill’s sister 13 years earlier. As they follow Chorus’s cryptic clues, dark, shocking secrets are pulled into the light — secrets that go back not only 13 years but to the time of Shakespeare. Guilty by Definition is an excellent debut novel that lovers of crime fiction and logophiles alike will enjoy.
Alexandria: The City That Changed the World
by Islam Issa
In this geographical biography, Issa transports readers to Alexandria, Egypt, a metropolis that continues to evolve after millennia of tragedy, victory, and drastic changes in power. Issa describes the sounds and sights of the city and how its present traditions reflect its rich past, connecting what today is referred to as “the bride of the sea” to the vision that Alexander the Great had for the city: a diverse and tolerant hub of philosophers, scholars, and religious figures. Alexandria is one of the first successful inter-ethnic metropolises — and a model that’s replicated across the world today — both despite and because of the empires, religions, and figures that shaped it.
This article is featured in the March/April 2026 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.
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