Reading and singing: Ned Sublette, The Year Before the Flood

Ned Sublette is not to be missed! Take our word for it. Live in person, direct from New York via New Orleans, he'll be reading from and talking about his great new book, "The Year Before the Flood" (Lawrence Hill Books), and will follow up with a short set of terrific, original songs. "The Year Before the Flood" is deep cultural history filtered through the personal, initiated by a year of research when Sublette and his wife, novelist Constance Ash, move to New Orleans -- before Hurricane Katrina radically alters so much of the Crescent City. His books are brilliant, original, necessary reading, sure instance of "the right work at the right time." "Ned Sublette is the rarest of writers. He possesses the empathy of Studs Terkel, the ambition of John Dos Passos, the ear of Mannie Fresh, and the fire of Joe Strummer, a mind that is restlessly capacious and a heart large enough to match." Jeff Chang.