billbeuttler.com

Scott Brown rode his pickup, barn coat, and genuine likability all the way to the U.S. Senate in 2010. Two years later the charm offensive is back and bigger than ever. But can Brown convince Massachusetts voters to return him to Washington just because he's a good man?

Whether you like it or not, Robert Glasper is going to make the jazz world safe for hip-hop and R&B — and vice versa

An intimate portrait of Pete Seeger

Dr. John brings the flavor of New Orleans to Tanglewood

Julian Lage celebrates the release of Gladwell at Club Passim

Pianist Fred Hersch succeeds by improvising onstage and off

Pianist Robert Glasper and his trio perform at Scullers

Esperanza Spalding leads a quarter at her Scullers debut

For Esperanza Spalding, practice makes perfect

On his album Same Mother and the family ties shared by jazz and the blues

Pianist McCoy Tyner as jazz's answer to Bob Dylan

A profile of the great jazz bassist Ron Carter

David Brooks skewers and subdivides American suburbia, only occasionally amusingly

Book Review: Waugh Abroad, by Evelyn Waugh

Jazzman Joe Lovano is at the top of his game, juggling a teaching gig at the Berklee College of Music with a full-throttle performing and recording career.

A profile of the jazz piano titan Ahmad Jamal

Review of the avant-garde jazz trio The Bad Plus, Regattabar, January 10, 2004

Branford Marsalis Quartet, Regattabar, December 26, 2003

A profile of the jazz saxophonist and composer Branford Marsalis and his CD Romare Bearden Revealed.

In his latest book, Scott Turow talks about how he came to believe that the country's experiment with capital punishment has "failed miserably."

Fifty years ago, Saul Bellow's third novel — a rollicking picaresque with a bold young Chicago hero — propelled him into the front ranks of American writers. Since then, critics have come to admire the book even more, with some calling it the greatest American novel since World War II.

An overnight trip to Rockland, Maine, for the paintings of Andrew Wyeth and the exquisite food at Primo.

In New York, the Hudson Valley is a hot spot for wine enthusiasts

Book Review: Uniforms: Why We Are What We Wear, by Paul Fussell

Book Review: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, by Toby Young

Robert Woodruff has put nudity in The Duchess of Malfi, fellatio in Phaedra, and Richard II in a dress. What's the new artistic director of the American Repertory Theatre got up his black sleeve next?

Why Harvard's new president and Cornel West couldn't just get along

The Boston Globe's old guard balked when an outsider was made editor. Now his "more, better, faster" approach is heating things up

Out of the glare of the television lights, how one Massachusetts family bade a son good-bye

But you already knew that, didn't you? Hard work ceases being a good thing when it takes over everything else in our lives. Here are some reasons that's been happening. And a few thoughts on what we can do about it.

Half a century ago, two of the most enduring books about Chicago appeared within a year of each other—-to the dismay and bewilderment of many proper-thinking residents. A.J. Liebling's The Second City mercilessly lampooned the city, while Nelson Algren's City on the Make took a clear-eyed look at its hustlers and bums. After all these years, how do their profiles stand up?

Tips from the master's own 12 volumes of memoirs for aspiring 21st-century Casanovas.

A little of this, a little of that, some dancing, some music — in Lebanon, that’s the recipe for healthy meals and lasting friendships.

A journey to the Dominican Republic and Cuba in search of the world's best cigars.

ESPN took TV sports to all new heights. Now it hopes to do the same as it enters the playing field long dominated by Sports Illustrated.

Unpublished Sonny Rollins profile

His good manners aside, Cliff Swain seldom spares his opponents.

It's a given that each fall in Elmhurst, Ill., Joe Newton can turn high school freshmen into first-class runners.

After just one night with native son and Ironweed author William Kennedy, you come to realize how he could put this city on the literary map.

One glance at Jim Harrison tells you he's not the sort of fellow you'd want to mess around with. But one look at his writing tells you he's one of this country's foremost poets and novelists.

Author Mordecai Richler fixes his absurdist squint on a moveable feast of a city, Montreal.

The mix of jazz, ballet, and modern styles at Chicago's Hubbard Street Dance Company incorporates the work of Willie Nelson and D.H. Lawrence, and audiences are raving over the results.

After 20 years of tilting at windmills, Charlie Peters is still fine-tuning liberalism in his Washington Monthly.

Will Hearst takes his grandpa’s San Francisco Examiner into the ’90s, from the best seat in the place.

America's favorite oral historian, and Chicago's laureate mouth, talks (and talks and talks) about his hometown.

Outside publisher Larry Burke founded a magazine that embodies the spirit of his exploits.

Columbia Journalism School master's thesis featuring fall 1983 interviews with Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Gay Talese, Harold Hayes, Clay Felker, Jann Wenner, and other leading writers and editors.