Brian Cullman with David Mansfield on ‘How to Prepare For The Past’ (Hoboken)
September 29, 7:00 PM ET • Hoboken, NJ: Little City Books | 100 Bloomfield Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030
Join ZE Books at Little City Books for an evening with How to Prepare For The Past: Travels In Music and Time, Brian Cullman’s memoir of a life in music. Cullman will be joined in conversation by the musician and composer David Mansfield.
How to Prepare For The Past: Travels In Music and Time is writer and musician Brian Cullman’s rapturous evocation of life in the bike lane—before the world was digital, when music was everything and magic was everywhere—encompassing friendships with Lester Bangs, Nick Drake, Big Joe Turner, Tim Hardin, and Paul Bowles.
The book moves between New York, London, Tangier, and points further out, gathering the encounters, near-misses, and long nights of a life spent listening. It begins with the radio as a first love: “It was all one sound. It was all one song: the drums and the words, the words without words, the rhythm and the static and the joy and amplified tears.”
About the Author
Brian Cullman is a writer and musician based in New York and in France. He has written extensively for The Paris Review, Antaeus, Rolling Stone, and The Village Voice, and has won the ASCAP/Deems Taylor award for excellence in music journalism three times. He has three solo albums on Sunnyside and is currently a member of the Lisbon-based group Rua Das Pretas.
About the Interlocutor
David Mansfield was eighteen when he joined Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, and he stayed in Dylan’s band for four years, playing violin, mandolin, pedal steel, and guitar. With T Bone Burnett and Steven Soles he formed the Alpha Band, which made three albums for Arista. He has scored more than forty films since Heaven’s Gate, among them The Ballad of Little Jo, Songcatcher, and Transamerica, and shared an Emmy nomination for Broken Trail with Van Dyke Parks.
About the Venue
Little City Books opened on Bloomfield Street after Hoboken lost its bookstores. The shop runs author events, story times, and a writers’ group, and gives the space over to live music, comedy, and plays. littlecitybooks.com
Writer and musician Brian Cullman’s rapturous evocation of life in the bike lane, before the world was digital, when music was everything and magic was everywhere, encompassing friendships with Lester Bangs, Nick Drake, Big Joe Turner, Tim Hardin, and Paul Bowles.
Release: Apr 28, 2026
Paperback ISBN: 9798988670100 • 256 pages
UK release: Jun 11, 2026 • UK Price: £14.99