What Happens When Amazon Dominates A Market Or A Consumer Good? Check Out Its Bookstore

Uh, not good: “Amazon takes a hands-off approach to what goes on in its bookstore, never checking the authenticity, much less the quality, of what it sells. It does not oversee the sellers who have flocked to its site in any organized way. That has resulted in a kind of lawlessness. Publishers, writers and groups such as the Authors Guild said counterfeiting of books on Amazon had surged.” – The New York Times

How Whitney Balliett Recorded The History Of Jazz

“When his seminal long portraits are blended with his shorter album reviews and reports from gigs, concerts, and festivals, what unfolds is a panoramic, novelistic chronicle of post-War America. Everything reverberates and gains value. Fifty or a hundred years from now this new publication would be the most important single document of twentieth century American jazz outside of the recorded sound.”

NYC’s High Line, Phase II: The ‘Flyover’ And The ‘Chelsea Thicket’

The second stage of the popular new elevated park, running from 20th to 30th Streets, opens next spring. The design will include “a ‘flyover’ where the walkway rises above the High Line’s level, and into the shady canopy of sumac trees” and “a dense stretch of trees and shrubs” described as a “version of Central Park’s wild and woolly Ramble” and named the “Chelsea Thicket.” (Ahem.)

Art Fraudster Lawrence Salander Won’t Go To Jail Yet

The “$120 million art swindler” on Wednesday “got yet another free pass from a generous judge,” who “declined prosecutors’ vehement demand that he be thrown in jail immediately.” This “followed a prosecutor’s nearly half-hour long listing of Salander’s broken promises to the court in the three months since he pleaded guilty to a massive, decade-long swindle.”

Berkeley Art Museum Taps Diller Scofidio + Renfro

“The choice signals that UC Berkeley remains serious about a cultural expansion that would bolster city efforts to position its downtown as a cultural destination. The selection also is an implicit act of one-upmanship to a friendly rival across the bay: The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has DS+R on a list of four finalists to design an expansion to its home….”