"This biography, written with a novelist’s stylization, was an incendiary moment in western culture. Ironically, it became the weapon that would win the cultural wars for dispossessed black, urban America. It’s impossible to think of what street culture of white Hollywood would look like without it. Slim is the most influential writer in English since Shakespeare."

"I just finished this one. Having never been to Australia, Winton transports you there within a few pages. Western Australia feels like a present day Wild West here—the scorched landscape and its watchful inhabitants. It arouses all your senses. And I want to slather Lu Fox in sunscreen and give him a book and a gentle hug."

"Let’s go with Seven Samurai. I’m a huge Akira Kurosawa fan. You can tell that Parabellum is the closest thing to a western chanbara film—which is a Japanese slang term for a samurai/sword-fighting movie. John Wick is basically paying tribute to all the great samurai and spaghetti westerns out there. That’s where we get it."