Writer and master muckraker Upton Sinclair catapulted to fame with his exposŽ novel on the meatpacking industry, The Jungle, which instigated the Pure Food and Drug Act. This year, Sinclair’s timely masterpiece turns 100, and Fulbright scholar Anthony Arthur gives us an excellent, balanced tribute to the author’s life, literary achievements and still relevant social platform.

Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair is an absorbing chronology; Arthur knows his subject well and appreciates the oxymoron of Sinclair’s austere personal habits and impassioned idealistic impulses. Chapters place Sinclair’s life into distinct identities (progressing from The Penniless Rat to The Sage ) following the publishing career of an outspoken social reformer and tireless, disciplined novelist who was the most conservative of revolutionaries. Arthur expertly contextualizes Sinclair’s life amid the rambunctious 20th-century milieu: Sinclair found celebrity at 27, had a long (eventually aborted) association with the American Socialist Party, a run in the 1943 California gubernatorial race, a Pulitzer Prize for Dragon’s Teeth (starring the inimitable Lanny Budd), and three marriages. Alison Hood is a writer in San Rafael, California.

<b>Writers’ night</b> <b>The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein</b> opens in June 1816, as a spooky summer storm rages around the Swiss villa of Lord Byron. Inside, five friends sit near a warm fire, writing ghost stories at the behest of their host. From the charged evening that gave birth both to Mary Shelley’s <i>Frankenstein</i> and the first vampire novel, <b>The Monsters</b> segues into a superlative, riveting history of Shelley’s idiosyncratic parentage (writers William Godwin and proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft), her love-starved childhood, and her erratic life with Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and their gifted contemporaries (including the mad, bad and dangerous to know Lord Byron).

With acute psychological insight, Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler, historians and award-winning authors of the <i>American Family Albums</i>, explicate Mary’s internal and external worlds, effectively connecting the turmoil of her 19th-century life to the poignant themes at the heart of <i>Frankenstein</i>. Though her family and friends experienced misfortune and untimely deaths after she published <i>Frankenstein</i>, <b>The Monsters</b> sensibly suggests that if malady fell upon them, it was because of their monstrous natures ones that veered unwisely toward self-aggrandizement, incest and excess all in a search for unconditional love.

<i>Alison Hood is a writer in San Rafael, California.</i>

Music journalist Rick Coleman’s insightful, often controversial new biography Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock ‘n’ Roll is both a loving tribute and a bold alternative cultural perspective. Coleman argues not only for a fresh look at Domino’s importance as a pianist, vocalist and songwriter, but also that the black contribution to rock ‘n’ roll has been minimized by numerous accounts painting Elvis Presley as the music’s creator. He is especially miffed that Domino’s status as a hit-maker and performer has taken a back seat to his personal flamboyance. While many of Coleman’s claims will be familiar to those with more than superficial knowledge of people like Big Joe Turner, LaVern Baker, Little Richard and Chuck Berry, he restates their impact with zeal and passion.

Coleman traces Domino’s rise in a New Orleans where issues of race and class hampered the city’s darker-skinned residents. He also shows how several major music labels and personalities among them such figures as Dick Clark, Alan Freed and Lew Chudd played favorites and political games, undercutting Domino and many other gifted black performers while insuring maximum publicity and performance opportunities for less talented white teen idols. But thankfully, the book isn’t totally gloom and doom. Coleman provides expert analysis of Domino’s playing style, showing his mastery of triplets and the integration of elements from African and Latin idioms alongside New Orleans blues and R&andamp;B. Domino was also an accomplished vocalist, particularly on upbeat, rhythmically tricky numbers. Most importantly, Coleman points out that Domino’s recordings have sold more than 100 million copies, making him one of the most successful composers in rock history. Such Domino originals as Blueberry Hill and Ain’t That a Shame are now staples, and Domino’s scope encompassed country, blues and jazz as well. While it’s doubtful that Blue Monday can reverse the effect of decades of inaccurate music journalism on its own, it sets the record straight regarding both Fats Domino and the creative impact of African Americans on ’50s popular music. Ron Wynn writes for the Nashville City Paper and other publications.