Helen Frankenthaler (1928 – 2011) had a long and prolific career that spanned more than five decades. She was especially prominent from the 1960s through the 1980s, with a powerful presence as one of the key artists of her generation working in an abstract mode. However, by the 1990s her work’s significance to and interest for then-current artistic discourse was waning. While she continued to be active into the early 2000s and was especially productive in the area of printmaking late in her career, at the time of her death her presence in the art world and influence on younger artists was little noted.

Ed Hamilton’s debut novel, Lords of the Schoolyard, is an unflinching depiction of bullying in suburban America. Though set in a southern town in the 1970s, the generic suburbia depicted in Lords of the Schoolyard could exist anywhere, at any time, in the U.S.A.