No doubt the Ocean State may be on your summer agenda. There’s no shortage of beaches and boating, of course. But summer in the city sizzles with spectacular warm-weather events in Providence — Rhode Island’s "Creative Capital".

Get yourself to a comfy lawn, or just a fun spot you've been meaning to explore. There are some great music venues for you to discover or revisit this summer in New England. And hey, if you have a favorite, please share it with the rest of us.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes: "The Last Days of Dogtown," serves as a eulogy for a town and its people but also for a way of life. Set in the early 1800s, the book is loosely based on a true story of a hardscrabble community just getting by on a particularly rocky patch of land on Cape Ann, Mass. The book is haunting, partly because of Diamant's lyrical language and partly because of the townspeople that she creates. Here are widows (some thought to be witches), orphans, spinsters, drunks, hussies and free people of color. Every last one is a disenfranchised soul with a troubled - or troublesome - past.

Late last year, Rolling Stone asked Bruce Springsteen about his inspiration. Springsteen said: “Howard Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States’ had an enormous impact on me. It made me feel that I was a player in this moment in history, as we all are, and that this moment in history was mine, somehow, to do with whatever I could.� It’s exactly what Zinn - Boston University Professor Emeritus, Marxist, activist, historian and playwright – has tried to instill in his students, readers and fans since the 1960s. And over the past few decades he’s attracted liberal musicians – like Springsteen, Billy Bragg and Eddie Vedder - and actors to his work.