Matt Hanson is a contributing editor of American Purpose and The Arts Fuse, Boston’s online independent arts and culture magazine. His work has appeared in The Baffler, The Guardian, The Millions, The New Yorker, The Smart Set, and Three Quarks Daily.
Modest Colossus
The first full biography of Sonny Rollins uncovers the jazz great's relentless drive for sonic perfection.
Chimes of Freedom
A new Bob Dylan biography draws on seven songs to explore the folk singer’s most quintessentially American trait–his perpetual self-reinvention.
The Wilder Touch
After escaping fascist Germany, filmmaker Billy Wilder shaped the golden era of Hollywood with barbed satire and fizzy comedies.
Music on the Page
On the eve of Bloomsday, contributing editor Matt Hanson looks to masterworks of Joyce and Eliot at one hundred.
Stargazers of Beauty
Jonathan Bate's book Bright Star, Green Light finds striking parallels in the life and work of John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
George Packer’s Four Americas
Last Best Hope doesn’t flinch from the harsh light of self-examination.
We Didn’t Invent the Movies
David Thomson’s book shows us just how much today’s films owe to yesterday’s pioneers.
Reserves of Imagination
The new PBS Hemingway documentary brings to light some surprising elements of the author’s literary greatness.
