CD
The Harrow and the Harvest, Gillian Welch
It’s been eight years since Gillian
Welch released her last record,
Soul Journey. Apparently, you
can’t blame her absence on writer’s
block. Welch,
whose career
blossomed
in 2001 with
the releases
of Time, The
Revelator and the soundtrack for O
Brother, Where Art Thou? (she co-produced
and starred), tells American
Songwriter magazine that she’s written
and discarded volumes of songs
since Soul Journey — none of them
was good enough. The tracks that
did make the cut on The Harrow and the Harvest, released June
28, don’t sound too different than
classic Welch/David Rawlings material
(haunting mid-tempo ballads, acoustic
guitar, tight harmony), but damn are
they good.
SPORTS 
The FIFA Women's World Cup
The FIFA Women's World Cup moves on to its bracket-style second round on Saturday in Germany. The countries that made the cut: Germany, France, Japan, Sweden, Brazil and the United States, who at press time were scheduled to play Sweden on Wednesday for division bragging rights. England, Mexico, Australia and
Norway will also have fought for a
chance at the bracket by the time you
read this. Catch the games on ESPN
and ESPN2.
BOOK
Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, David Eagleman
A friend recently mentioned that
thinking too much freaked her
out — that stopping to consider
the billions
of neurons and
muscles and bones
that have to fire
together just for
her to scratch her
nose overwhelmed her. Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain is
not a book for her. Written by neuroscientist
David Eagleman, it focuses
on all the amazing work your brain
does below the radar of consciousness
— how you hit the brakes before
you even recognize the threat, how a
batter hits a fastball before he even
sees it, etc. Like Freakonomics for the
brainy, this book is a mind-blower.
