With his book Naked Angels, a triple biography of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs, literary critic John Tytell was among the first voices to lend legitimacy to the Beat movement, making a case for the merits and far-reaching influence of writing that had largely been ghettoized in critical circles. Two decades later, Tytell has returned with another book on the subject, but without much new to say. Alternating between handsome pictures of the Beats in the decades following their glory days (taken by Tytell's wife, the mononymical Mellon) and short essays on—once again—Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac, Paradise Outlaws resembles a coffee-table book with lofty but unfulfilled aspirations. Tytell's guiding impulse seems to be a desire to improve what he perceives to be the Beats' still-undervalued critical stock, but to that end he states his case in only the broadest of terms, rarely discussing the authors' work in detail. If a rescue operation is what Tytell had in mind, he might have been better served saving the Beats from their admirers, those most likely to pick up such a book. While the author's admiration is clearly genuine—and he's more grounded in reality than those who have thoughtlessly iconicized inadvertent Gap pitchman Kerouac and his former roommates—Tytell fails to cast the movement in a new light, feeding into and off of the Beat cottage industry and doing little good for anyone. Except, that is, for those who want an attractive book of photographs and clearheaded, marginally interesting essays to convey his or her appreciation of the Beats at a glance. Sparks of insight and the author's general eloquence suggest Tytell has more to say about his subject, but with Paradise Outlaws, he simply treads ground that has already been pressed flat.