Scope and Contents New York Times book review: William S. Burroughs "didn't say anything for shock value," his student Sam Kashner once observed. "His life had shock value." Born to a prominent St. Louis family in 1914, Burroughs linked his lineage at every point to the fatal plotlines of American hubris and power. His mother's family had been slave owners in the antebellum South; his paternal grandfather invented the adding machine, a building block in the embryonic military-­industrial-media complex. His uncle Ivy Lee, a pioneer of public relations, counted Hitler's regime among his preferred clients. Burroughs himself spent time in Vienna in the 1930s and learned a lesson he never forgot: Everything Hitler did was legal. Laws could spur, not deter, the blackest of crimes. To top it off, young Bill had also attended the Los Alamos Ranch School in New Mexico, which in 1943 would be co-opted for the Manhattan Project. "The sick soul, sick unto death, of the atomic age" became his great...

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Jerome Rothenberg contributes a pre-face in which he writes that "Footnotes, presented here, is the accounting of where Alison Knowles' feet (and hands and mind) have taken her." The pages of this book are reproductions of notebook pages dating from 1975 to 1995, inscribed and collaged by Knowles. As Knowles herself stated, "It is important to remember that we are free to make art and poetry out of anything: A loaf of bread, some beans, a hasty jotting on the train." -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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These facsimile notebooks in Brecht's handwriting are studies for his performance pieces, critical writings, experimental musical scores, poem objects and chance images. One volume is a replica of Brecht's class notes from the summer of 1958 taught by John Cage. Dieter Daniels was the editor with the collaboration of Hermann Braun. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.