PositiveBook ForumLingan’s prose is empathetic and evocative, clearly written by a close listener ... If his New Journalist sensibility sometimes leads him to insert himself into the narrative unexpectedly, he tends to justify his presence ... Even as an outsider, [Lingan] is able to both identify and describe country music with sympathy but without illusions. Homeplace does something that is almost never done in writing about music: it considers not just the songs and the singers, but the listeners too. People didn’t just write, sing, and play country music; they lived, loved, drank, and died to it. This book is about them.
Corey Pein
RaveThe New Republic\"The Silicon Valley that Pein uncovers is not unlike dystopian visions we are accustomed to seeing in science fiction. Like any of number of fictional futures, from Metropolis to Altered Carbon, it is a society where the wealthy in live in glistening towers in the clouds, surrounded by technologies of luxury and convenience, looking down on an underclass that cannot afford basic necessities. As Pein shows, the world where a handful of billionaires own more wealth than the majority of the world’s population is not just the stuff of fantasy, it’s the world we’re living in ... As Live Work Work Work Die shows, most success stories are not entirely the result of dreams realized in the open market.\
