article_snippet.sent: Drama: 'Between Riverside and Crazy,' by Stephen Adly Guirgis, a nuanced, beautifully written play about a retired police officer faced with eviction that uses dark comedy to confront questions of life and death.
article_snippet.sent: History: 'Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People,' by Elizabeth A. Fenn (Hill and Wang), an engrossing, original narrative showing the Mandans, a Native American tribe in the Dakotas, as a people with a history.
article_snippet.sent: Poetry: 'Digest,' by Gregory Pardlo (Four Way Books), clear-voiced poems that bring readers the news from 21st Century America, rich with thought, ideas and histories public and private.
article_snippet.sent: General Nonfiction: '
article_snippet.sent: An Unnatural History,' by Elizabeth Kolbert
article_snippet.sent: (Henry Holt), an exploration of nature that forces readers to consider the threat posed by human behavior to a world of astonishing diversity.
article_snippet.sent: MUSIC: 'Anthracite Fields,' by Julia Wolfe, premiered on April 26, 2014, in Philadelphia by the Bang on a Can All-Stars and the Mendelssohn Club Chorus, a powerful oratorio for chorus and sextet evoking Pennsylvania coal-mining life around the turn of the 20th Century (Red Poppy Music/G. Schirmer Inc.)