A ROUNDUP OF 125 OR SO JAZZ, BLUES, BEYOND, AND OTHER BOOKS PUBLISHED IN THE PAST YEAR OR SO.
1) BIOGRAPHIES
Gary Giddins, Bing Crosby: Swinging on a Star: The War Years, 1940-1946 (Little, Brown and Company). “Bing Crosby dominated American popular culture in a way that few artists ever have. From the dizzy era of Prohibition through the dark days of the Second World War, he was a desperate nation's most beloved entertainer. But he was more than just a charismatic crooner: Bing Crosby redefined the very foundations of modern music, from the way it was recorded to the way it was orchestrated and performed.
In this much-anticipated follow-up to the universally acclaimed first volume, NBCC Winner and preeminent cultural critic Gary Giddins now focuses on Crosby's most memorable period, the war years and the origin story of White Christmas. Set against the backdrop of a Europe on the brink of collapse, this groundbreaking work traces Crosby's skyrocketing career as he fully inhabits a new era of American entertainment and culture. While he would go on to reshape both popular music and cinema more comprehensively than any other artist, Crosby's legacy would be forever intertwined with his impact on the home front, a unifying voice for a nation at war. Over a decade in the making and drawing on hundreds of interviews and unprecedented access to numerous archives, Giddins brings Bing Crosby, his work, and his world to vivid life--firmly reclaiming Crosby's central role in American cultural history.”
“Gary Giddins wrote the Weather Bird jazz column in the Village Voice for over 30 years and later directed the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the CUNY Graduate Center. He received the National Nook Critics Circle Award, the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award, and the Bell Atlantic Award for Visions of Jazz: The First Century in 1998. His other books include Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams-The Early Years, 1930-1940, which won the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award and the ARSC Award for Excellence in Historical Sound Research; Weatherbird: Jazz at the Dawn of Its Second Century; Faces in the Crowd; Natural Selection; Warning Shadow; and biographies of Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. He has won six ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Peabody Award in Broadcasting. He lives in New York.
“Gary Giddins may be the best thing to happen to Bing Crosby since Bob Hope. . . . Crosby couldn't have hoped for a finer biographer: elegant writer, informed historian, thorough scholar, and one of America's most eminent jazz critics.” John McDonough, Wall Street Journal
Photographs, discography, filmography, notes, bibliography, index.
Sophisticated Giant: The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon (University of California Press), by Maxine Gordon, Foreword by Farah Jasmine Griffin, Afterword by Woody Louis Armstrong Shaw III, “presents the life and legacy of tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon (1923–1990), one of the major innovators of modern jazz. In a context of biography, history, and memoir, Maxine Gordon has completed the book that her late husband began, weaving his ‘solo’ turns with her voice and a chorus of voices from past and present. Reading like a jazz composition, the blend of research, anecdote, and a selection of Dexter’s personal letters reflects his colorful life and legendary times. It is clear why the celebrated trumpet genius Dizzy Gillespie said to Dexter, ‘Man, you ought to leave your karma to science.’ Dexter Gordon the icon is the Dexter beloved and celebrated on albums, on film, and in jazz lore--even in a street named for him in Copenhagen. But this image of the cool jazzman fails to come to terms with the multidimensional man full of humor and wisdom, a figure who struggled to reconcile being both a creative outsider who broke the rules and a comforting insider who was a son, father, husband, and world citizen. This essential book is an attempt to fill in the gaps created by our misperceptions as well as the gaps left by Dexter himself.”
“Who is Dexter Gordon? 1) A great musician of the highest level. 2) A great human being of the highest level.” Sonny Rollins.
“What began as a solemn promise to Dexter Gordon to finish writing the story of his life is now an extraordinary gift to those of us who are the fortunate readers of Sophisticated Giant. Maxine Gordon’s rigorously researched, jazz-inflected, genre-bending account of the many dimensions of this prodigious life—from small intimacies, musical and personal, to major social issues, such as racism, drugs, and mass incarceration—is an occasion to appreciate Dexter’s resounding musical genius as well as his wish for major social transformation.” Angela Y. Davis, political activist, scholar, author, and speaker.
Photographs, notes, bibliography, index.
Zeke Schein, with Poppy Brite, Portrait of a Phantom: Story of Robert Johnson’s Lost Photograph (Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.). “Late one night in 2005, Zeke Schein made an amazing discovery while searching for a vintage guitar on eBay: a grainy, battered photograph captioned Old Snapshot Blues Guitar BB King???? Neither man looked like King, but one seemed to resemble the twentieth century’s most mysterious musician, Robert Johnson. Would others see what he saw? With only three or four known images of the legendary blues guitarist in existence, this single picture was certainly an exceptional link to the past. In 2014, the truth about the photo was finally revealed. Schein details his strange journey in solving this musical mystery and crusade for legitimacy amidst pushback from music historians.”
Notes, bibliography.
Nichole Rustin-Paschal’s The Kind of Man I Am: Jazzmasculinity and the World of Charles Mingus Jr. (Music/Culture)(Wesleyan) “uses Mingus as a lens through which to craft a gendered cultural history of postwar jazz culture. This book challenges the persisting narrative of Mingus as jazz’s ‘Angry Man’ by examining the ways the language of emotion has been used in jazz as shorthand for competing ideas about masculinity, authenticity, performance, and authority. Nearly four decades after his death, Charles Mingus Jr. remains one of the least understood and most recognized jazz composers and musicians of our time. Mingus’s ideas about music, racial identity, and masculinity—as well as those of other individuals in his circle, like Celia Mingus, Hazel Scott, and Joni Mitchell—challenged jazz itself as a model of freedom, inclusion, creativity, and emotional expressivity.”
“In her fascinating book Nichole Rustin-Paschal examines many aspects of Mingus’ art and influence, from his collaboration with Joni Michel . . . to [his] dark and twisty recollections of growing up in South Central Los Angeles as a shy, light-skinned son of a tough, Caucasian-looking Army father, and his struggles as a black musician.” Eugene Holley Jr., Downbeat
Notes, bibliography, index.
Peter Jones, This Is Hip: The Life of Mark Murphy(Popular Music History) (Equinox). “When Mark Murphy died in October 2015, the world lost one of the greatest jazz singer in history. Murphy was the last of his kind, a hipster of the Kerouac generation, who rejected the straight life of prosperity and numb consumerism. With a catalogue of more than 40 albums under his own name, Mark Murphy was a consummate improviser, who never sang a song the same way twice. He could have enjoyed a successful mainstream career in the vein of Mel Tormé or Jack Jones. But his ambition was greater to be an artist, to rebel against the commercial music industry and to carry the jazz vocal flame wherever it led him.
Murphy was a master of scat and vocalese, of songwriting and the spoken word. He expanded the jazz singing repertoire, adding his own lyrics to instrumentals like John Coltrane’s “Naima,” Freddie Hubbard’s “Red Clay,” and Oliver Nelson’s “Stolen Moments.” Unrivalled as an interpreter of ballads, he was able to express longing and regret to a degree lacking in any other jazz singer.
For years he roamed the world, playing thousands of gigs. Rediscovered in the Eighties by a new audience of jazz dancers, and again in the 21st century by a digital generation who invited him to guest on their recordings, he remains a crucial though unjustly neglected figure in vocal jazz.
This Is Hip is more than a biography: it also explores Murphy s innovative approaches both to singing and to the teaching of singers. Based on numerous interviews with those who knew him best, the book delves into a performing and recording career that spanned 60 years and earned him five Grammy nominations.”
Photographs, discography, notes, bibliography, index.
Mervyn Cooke, Pat Metheny: The ECM Years, 1975-1984 (Oxford Studies in Recorded Jazz) (Oxford University Press).
“The guitarist and composer Pat Metheny ranks among the most popular and innovative jazz musicians of all time. In Pat Metheny: The ECM Years, 1975-1984, Mervyn Cooke offers the first in-depth account of Metheny's early creative period, during which he recorded eleven stunningly varied albums for the pioneering European record label ECM (Edition of Contemporary Music). This impressive body of recordings encompasses both straight-ahead jazz playing with virtuosic small ensembles and the increasingly complex textures and structures of the Pat Metheny Group, a hugely successful band also notable for its creative exploration of advanced music technologies which were state-of-the-art at the time.
Metheny's music in all its shapes and forms broke major new ground in its refusal to subscribe to either of the stylistic poles of bebop and jazz-rock fusion which prevailed in the late 1970s. Through a series of detailed analyses based on a substantial body of new transcriptions from the recordings, this study reveals the close interrelationship of improvisation and pre-composition which lies at the very heart of the music. Furthermore, these analyses vividly demonstrate how Metheny's music is often conditioned by a strongly linear narrative model: both its story-telling characteristics and atmospheric suggestiveness have sometimes been compared to those of film music, a genre in which the guitarist also became active during this early period. The melodic memorability for which Metheny's compositions and improvisations have long been world-renowned is shown to be just one important element in an unusually rich and flexible musical language that embraces influences as diverse as bebop, free jazz, rock, pop, country & western, Brazilian music, classical music, minimalism, and the avant-garde. These elements are melded into a uniquely distinctive soundworld which, above all, directly reflects Metheny's passionate belief in the need to refashion jazz in ways which can allow it to speak powerfully to each new generation of youthful listeners.”
“The fact that Cooke only illuminates Pat Metheny's ECM years and thus captures only a quarter of the work that has since been released (44 albums) is by no means a disadvantage. Often he looks beyond the horizon, to the years 1985 and following; and draws connecting lines from there to the investigation periodEL The result is a massive accumulation of original compositions to which he can relate to without even the slightest hint of stylistic disagreement.” JazzCity
“What a great book! I was hoping for this to be a Pat Metheny version of Ashley Kahn’s Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpieceand A Love Supreme: The Creation of John Coltrane's Classic Album. But I think that it’s much more! From 1976’s Bright Size Lifeto 1984’s First Circle- 8 years - 11 albums of such diverse creativity. This is a really clear examination of the step-by-step development of PMs early music. I am assuming that it’s a college textbook - there’s a lot of technical analysis of the music. However, since I am a non-musician, I just ploughed-on through those bits enjoying the sound of the words! (maybe I imbibed some music theory along the way!) but I did learn a lot of new stuff about PM’s creative history. For a simple Pat Metheny music fan, the book tells a great story and it is really well told by Prof Cooke.” DBM (an Amazon reviewer)
Photographs, musical notations, bibliography, discography, filmography, index.
Kevin Winkler, Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical (Broadway Legacies)(Oxford University Press)
“A fascinating look at the evolution of Fosse as choreographer and director, Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical considers Fosse's career in the context of changes in the Broadway musical theater over four decades. It traces his early dance years and the importance of mentors George Abbott and Jerome Robbins on his work. It examines how each of the important women in his adult life--all dancers--impacted his career and influenced his dance aesthetic. Finally, the book investigates how his evolution as both artist and individual mirrored the social and political climate of his era and allowed him to comfortably ride a wave of cultural changes.”
“Having worked with and been fortunate to be trained by some truly great choreographers/directors-Jerome Robbins, Michael Kidd, Peter Gennaro, Gower Champion-I could not have been luckier to learn yet another great style, Bob Fosse's. A style never explored before: sex appeal, innocence and humor in minimal movements. He himself was a great dancer, one who could dance all styles. In Sweet Charity his choreography ranged from explosive to controlled, precise, focused, tiny movements. People have a tendency to speak of the 'Fosse Style' as only small movements, but he had a wide range that fit his directorial talents. It has been rewarding to learn from Bobby through the years. He is one of a kind, and this book says it all.” Chita Rivera
Photographs, notes, bibliography, index
I cherish Gary Giddins’ words upon presenting me, in New York’s Blue Note on the afternoon of June 11, 2014, that year’s Jazz Journalists Association’s Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism Award, especially his observation, “Most of us who write about jazz write about jazz, but Royal, what he’s done, which is so exceptional, is that he’s let the musicians speak for themselves. His books are absolutely indispensible because he stays out of the way and allows them the freedom to talk about their music and themselves and their lives in a way that allows them to be as elegant as they can be.” I can say the same about Brian Gruber’s, Six Days at Ronnie Scott’s: Billy Cobham on Jazz Fusion and the Act of Creation (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform/ grubermedia.com), which is both indispensible and, as its publicity description says, “a one-of-a-kind oral history of a legend's life work.” It goes on to say, “From his early days with Horace Silver and Dreams to the epochal Bitches Brew sessions with Miles Davis to the breakthrough Mahavishnu Orchestra and beyond, here is a first-ever deep dive into six decades of musical innovation. The book's setting is six days at iconic London jazz club Ronnie Scott's, as Britain's hottest arranger Guy Barker orchestrates and leads a big band performing Cobham's greatest works. Jazz greats such as Ron Carter, Randy Brecker, and Jan Hammer, family members, club owners, critics and superfans provide colorful insights and remembrances. Readers are given an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look into rehearsals, performances, adjustments and preparations between shows, and the evolution of a sold-out six-day run.”
“The book is a massive undertaking . . . Despite being raised a generation and culture apart from Bed-Sty raised Panamanian born William Emanuel Cobham, Jr., Gruber manages to pull off a remarkable feat of music journalism. . . . The interviews with Cobham cover a galaxy of subjects; from the cruel realities of the New York public school system, to the rhythmic complexity of a woman sashaying when walking or the sonic intricacies of live performance. . . . There is so much information in this book that any serious student of Jazz, Fusion or music history will reap a bountiful harvest...A nice touch is the Spotify Soundtrack for each chapter of the book that contains some very unexpected musical gems. Hats off to Brian Gruber who accomplished what few could have written with such elaborate authority.” Tee Watts, Cadence Jazz Magazine
“An interesting concept . . . his questions are knowledgeable and penetrating . . . rather than dallying in the kind of film-flam that obfuscates the detail, memories and opinions that make a biography breathe . . . Fast paced with anecdotes pouring from every page, it wraps with Cobham describing his dream line-up to play with. Want to know who? Then go grab a copy.” Jon Newey, editor-in-chief of Jazzwise, the UK's biggest selling monthly jazz magazine and the leading English language jazz magazine in Europe.
Discography.
Ethan Mordden, All That Jazz: The Life and Times of the Musical Chicago (Oxford University Press). “In 1975, the Broadway musical Chicago brought together a host of memes and myths - the gleefully subversive character of American musical comedy, the reckless glamour of the big-city newspaper, the mad decade of the 1920s, the work of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon (two of the greatest talents in the musical's history), and the Wild West gangsterville that was the city of Chicago itself. The tale of a young woman who murders her departing lover and then tricks the jury into letting her off, Chicago seemed too blunt and cynical at first. Everyone agreed it was show biz at its brilliant best, yet the public still preferred A Chorus Line, with its cast of innocents and sentimental feeling. Nevertheless, the 1996 Chicago revival is now the longest-running American musical in history, and the movie version won the Best Picture Oscar. As author Ethan Mordden looks back at Chicago's various moving parts - including the original 1926 play that started it all, a sexy silent film directed by Cecil B. DeMille, a talkie remake with Ginger Rogers, the musical itself, and at last the movie of the musical - we see how the American theatre serves as a kind of alternative news medium, a town crier warning the public about the racy, devious interior contradictions of American society. Opinionated, witty, and rich in backstage anecdotes, All That Jazzbrings the American Musical to life in all its artistry and excitement.
Photographs, discography, bibliography, index.
Tom Ewing’s Bill Monroe: The Life and Music of the Blue Grass Man (Music in American Life)(University of Illinois Press) “sets out to examine [Bill Monroe’s] life in careful detail--to move beyond hearsay and sensationalism to explain how and why he accomplished so much. Former Blue Grass Boy and longtime music journalist Tom Ewing draws on hundreds of interviews, his personal relationship with Monroe, and an immense personal archive of materials to separate the truth from longstanding myth. Ewing tells the story of the Monroe family's musical household and Bill's early career in the Monroe Brothers duo. He brings to life Monroe's 1940s heyday with the Classic Bluegrass Band, the renewed fervor for his music sparked by the folk revival of the 1960s, and his declining fortunes in the years that followed. Throughout, Ewing deftly captures Monroe's relationships and the personalities of an ever-shifting roster of band members while shedding light on his business dealings and his pioneering work with Bean Blossom and other music festivals. Filled with a wealth of previously unknown details, Bill Monroe offers even the most devoted fan a deeper understanding of Monroe's towering achievements and timeless music.”
“An exciting and rewarding read. No one knows the literature about and by Bill Monroe better than this author. He stitches what other readers have seen as fragments into the first deep and coherent narrative of Monroe's early years. They are sewn into a fabric of intense research into the time, place, and people in Monroe's life.” Neil V. Rosenberg, author of Bluegrass Generation: A Memoir.
Photographs, notes, bibliography, index.
Jas Obrecht, Stone Free: Jimi Hendrix in London, September 1966–June 1967 (University of North Carolina Press) is “a compelling portrait of rock's greatest guitarist at the moment of his ascendance. Stone Free is the first book to focus exclusively on the happiest and most productive period of Jimi Hendrix's life. As it begins in the fall of 1966, he's an under-sung, under-accomplished sideman struggling to survive in New York City. Nine months later, he's the toast of Swinging London, a fashion icon, and the brightest star to step off the stage at the Monterey International Pop Festival. This momentum-building, day-by-day account of this extraordinary transformation offers new details into Jimi's personality, relationships, songwriting, guitar innovations, studio sessions, and record releases. It explores the social changes sweeping the U.K., Hendrix's role in the dawning of "flower power," and the prejudice he faced while fronting the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In addition to featuring the voices of Jimi, his bandmates, and other eyewitnesses, Stone Free draws extensively from contemporary accounts published in English- and foreign-language newspapers and music magazines. This celebratory account is a must-read for Hendrix fans.”
“Obrecht deftly focuses on Jimi's transformation from caterpillar to butterfly. He tracks Hendrix's movement on virtually a day-to-day basis over ten months when a little-known, uncertain young New York guitarist emerged as the brightest, most powerful new voice in the exploding world of rock music. His research is breathtaking and the fine-point details remarkable.” Joel Selvin, author of Summer of Love
Photographs, notes, index.
Dylan Jones’ David Bowie: A Life (Crown Archetype/Penguin Random House) “is unlike any Bowie story ever written. Drawn from over 180 interviews with friends, rivals, lovers, and collaborators, some of whom have never before spoken about their relationship with Bowie, this oral history weaves a hypnotic spell as it unfolds the story of a remarkable rise to stardom and an unparalleled artistic path. Tracing Bowie’s life from the English suburbs to London to New York to Los Angeles, Berlin, and beyond, its collective voices describe a man profoundly shaped by his relationship with his schizophrenic half-brother Terry; an intuitive artist who could absorb influences through intense relationships and yet drop people cold when they were no longer of use; and a social creature equally comfortable partying with John Lennon and dining with Frank Sinatra. By turns insightful and deliciously gossipy, David Bowie is as intimate a portrait as may ever be drawn. It sparks with admiration and grievances, lust and envy, as the speakers bring you into studios and bedrooms they shared with Bowie, and onto stages and film sets, opening corners of his mind and experience that transform our understanding of both artist and art. Including illuminating, never-before-seen material from Bowie himself, drawn from a series of Jones’s interviews with him across two decades, David Bowie is an epic, unforgettable cocktail-party conversation about a man whose enigmatic shape shifting and irrepressible creativity produced one of the most sprawling, fascinating lives of our time.”
“Jones’ Bowie opus serves as the ultimate oral history of the artist’s life and musical journey.” Billboard
“Revelatory and surprising — perfect for the Ziggy completist.” New York Magazine
“Beguiling . . . the fabulosity of Bowie’s life and times lends itself extraordinarily well to the oral history form.” San Francisco Chronicle
Chronology, dramatis personae.
Seymour Stein’s Siren Song: My Life in Music (St. Martin's Press), with Gareth Murphy, “is about modernity in motion, and the slow acceptance of diversity in America – thanks largely to daring pop music. . . . Seymour Stein is America's greatest living record man. Not only has he signed and nurtured more important artists than anyone alive, now sixty years in the game, he's still the hippest label head, travelling the globe in search of the next big thing. Since the late fifties, he's been wherever it's happening: Billboard, Tin Pan Alley, The British Invasion, CBGB, Studio 54, Danceteria, the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, the CD crash. Along that winding path, he discovered and broke out a skyline full of stars: Madonna, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Depeche Mode, Madonna, The Smiths, The Cure, Ice-T, Lou Reed, Seal, and many others. Brimming with hilarious scenes and character portraits, Siren Song. . . . includes both the high and low points in his life, touching on everything from his discovery of Madonna to his wife Linda Stein's violent death. Ask anyone in the music business, Seymour Stein is a legend. Sung from the heart, Siren Songwill etch his story in stone.”
“Stein’s anecdote-packed memoir tells of his life as a music executive, in what is an entertaining ride though music history. . . . Stein wonderfully captures his obsessive love for the bruising music business and introducing music-lovers to new bands―and not going deaf or broke in the process.” Publishers Weekly
Photographs, index.
In second place on my list of reading preferences is biography. (Fiction, especially novels, has headed the list since the age of ten when I devoured Dickens’ Oliver Twist. My oral report on it held my fifth grade class at Jacobsville School, Maryland, spellbound.) And my favorite biographies are those of fiction writers, e.g., recently read ones of Theodore Dreiser, John Updike, and the first volume of Zachary Leader’s masterful account of one of America’s greatest writers, The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune 1915–1964. Now we have volume 2, The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife, 1965-2005 (Knopf), and it is, like the 2015 volume 1, an absorbing read.
Zachary Leader’s The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife 1965-2005 (Knopf) “opens [when] Bellow, at forty-nine, is at the pinnacle of American letters - rich, famous, critically acclaimed. The expected trajectory is one of decline: volume 1, rise; volume 2, fall. Bellow never fell, producing some of his greatest fiction (Mr. Sammler's Planet, Humboldt's Gift, all his best stories), winning two more National Book Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, and the Nobel Prize. At eighty, he wrote his last story; at eighty-five, he wrote Ravelstein. In this volume, his life away from the desk, including his love life, is if anything more dramatic than in volume 1. In the public sphere, he is embroiled in controversy over foreign affairs, race, religion, education, social policy, the state of culture, the fate of the novel. Bellow's relations with women were often fraught. In the 1960s he was compulsively promiscuous (even as he inveighed against sexual liberation). The women he pursued, the ones he married, and those with whom he had affairs, were intelligent, attractive and strong-willed. At eighty-five he fathered his fourth child, a daughter, with his fifth wife. His three sons, whom he loved, could be as volatile as he was, and their relations with their father were often troubled. Although an early and engaged supporter of civil rights, in the second half of his life Bellow was angered by the excesses of Black Power. An opponent of cultural relativism, he exercised great influence in literary and intellectual circles, advising a host of institutes and foundations, helping those he approved of, hindering those of whom he disapproved. In making his case, he could be cutting and rude; he could also be charming, loyal, and funny. Bellow's heroic energy and will are clear to the very end of his life. His immense achievement and its cost, to himself and others, are also clear.”
Zachary Leader is professor of English literature at the University of Roehampton in London. Although born and raised in the United States, he has lived in Britain for more than forty years and has dual British and American citizenship. In addition to teaching at Roehampton, he has held visiting professorships at Caltech and the University of Chicago. He was educated at Northwestern University; Trinity College, Cambridge; and Harvard University; and is the author of Reading Blake’s Songs, Writer’s Block, Revision and Romantic Authorship, The Life of Kingsley Amis, a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, and The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune 1915–1964. He has edited Romantic Period Writings, 1798–1832: An Anthology(with Ian Haywood); The Letters of Kingsley Amis; On Modern British Fiction; Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Major Works(with Michael O’Neill); The Movement Reconsidered: Essays on Larkin, Amis, Gunn, Davie, and Their Contemporaries; and On Life-Writing. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and General Editor of The Oxford History of Life-Writing, a seven-volume series.
Philip Roth (1933-2018): “As a friend to Saul and as an awestruck admirer of his astonishing work, I was not always at ease reading portions of this painfully intimate biography. Nonetheless, the book's sweep and majesty—like that of its subject—are not to be denied. All the personal strife is there, the controversies and the disasters, his magical power of observation, that intellect, along with a meticulous record of how, with what labor—the peasant doggedness and the meticulous workmanship and the grinding patience and the hard won inspiration—the great novels came to be written.”
“A top-notch exploration of one of the most important midcentury writers.” Kirkus Reviews.
Photographs, notes, bibliography, index.
Nicholas Frankel’s, Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years (Harvard University Press) “presents a new and revisionary account of Wilde’s final years, spent in poverty and exile on the European continent following his release from an English prison for the crime of “gross indecency” between men. <rem>Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years challenges the prevailing, traditional view of Wilde as a broken, tragic figure, a martyr to Victorian sexual morality, and shows instead that he pursued his post-prison life with passion, enjoying new liberties while trying to resurrect his literary career. After two bitter years of solitary confinement, Frankel shows, Wilde emerged from prison in 1897 determined to rebuild his life along lines that were continuous with the path he had followed before his conviction, unapologetic and even defiant about the crime for which he had been convicted. England had already done its worst. In Europe’s more tolerant atmosphere, he could begin to live openly and without hypocrisy. Frankel overturns previous misunderstandings of Wilde’s relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, the great love of his life, with whom he hoped to live permanently in Naples, following their secret and ill-fated elopement there. He describes how and why the two men were forced apart, as well as Wilde’s subsequent relations with a series of young men. Oscar Wilde pays close attention to Wilde’s final two important works, De Profundisand The Ballad of Reading Gaol, while detailing his nearly three-year residence in Paris. There, despite repeated setbacks and open hostility, Wilde attempted to rebuild himself as a man―and a man of letters.”
“[A] detailed and finely judged account of Wilde’s life after prison.” Colm Tóibín, The Guardian
“[A] fascinating study of the hitherto largely neglected last phase of Wilde’s life. . . . [A] quiet but persuasively revisionist account.” John Banville, New York Review of Books
“[Frankel’s] purpose is to refute the traditional view of Wilde ending as a broken martyr, a victim of hypocritical Victorian morality. . . . While the pages in which Wilde tries to touch for a handout anyone he knew make for painful reading, the rest of Frankel’s history is scintillating enough. The quotes from Wilde’s sayings and writings sparkle, defiantly undimmed.” John Simon, Weekly Standard
Photographs, notes, index.
David Stuttard’s Nemesis: Alcibiades and the Fall of Athens (Harvard University Press) “recreates ancient Athens at the height of its glory as he follows Alcibiades from childhood to political power. Outraged by Alcibiades’ celebrity lifestyle, his enemies sought every chance to undermine him. Eventually, facing a capital charge of impiety, Alcibiades escaped to the enemy, Sparta. There he traded military intelligence for safety until, suspected of seducing a Spartan queen, he was forced to flee again―this time to Greece’s long-term foes, the Persians. Miraculously, though, he engineered a recall to Athens as Supreme Commander, but―suffering a reversal―he took flight to Thrace, where he lived as a warlord. At last in Anatolia, tracked by his enemies, he died naked and alone in a hail of arrows. As he follows Alcibiades’ journeys crisscrossing the Mediterranean from mainland Greece to Syracuse, Sardis, and Byzantium, Stuttard weaves together the threads of Alcibiades’ adventures against a backdrop of cultural splendor and international chaos. Navigating often contradictory evidence, Nemesis provides a coherent and spellbinding account of a life that has gripped historians, storytellers, and artists for more than two thousand years. Alcibiades was one of the most dazzling figures of the Golden Age of Athens. A ward of Pericles and a friend of Socrates, he was spectacularly rich, bewitchingly handsome and charismatic, a skilled general, and a ruthless politician. He was also a serial traitor, infamous for his dizzying changes of loyalty in the Peloponnesian War. Nemesis tells the story of this extraordinary life and the turbulent world that Alcibiades set out to conquer.
“Alcibiades will always be remembered as one of the slipperiest statesmen in history…Nemesis is a rich and rewarding biography, as thorough as it is bracing and as measured as it is entertaining. Stuttard is to be praised for capturing the complexity of both the man and the world he lived in with such sensitivity and clarity.” Daisy Dunn, New Criterion
“David Stuttard is a recognized expert at making the ancient Greek world come alive for modern audiences. In Nemesis, he conveys the horror and the glory of the years of Athens’ greatness and decline. Central to these processes was the flamboyant Alcibiades, and Stuttard, wearing his learning lightly, gives us a hugely entertaining biography that is simultaneously an exciting adventure story and a pithy history of the period.” Robin Waterfield, author of Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens: A History of Ancient Greece
Photographs, notes, timeline, index.
2) PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTIONS, HISTORY, REFERENCE, CRITICISM, ETC.
Christopher Hillman and Richard Rains, with Michael Hortig, Foreword by Paul Swinton, New Orleans To Texas (Chris Hillman Books/chbooks.info).
As I have observed in reviews of Chris Hillman’s earlier publications, he and his collaborators are musical archaeologists, adept at unearthing all available information about the subjects of their investigations. This most recent of their numerous publications (see: chbooks.info) is highly recommended for both its text and the accompanying CD, which will provide rewarding repeated listening. Mr. Hillman and his colleagues in research have provided an invaluable service by their delving onto the roots of jazz and blues. It would be well for those truly interested in the history of these two classic idioms—perhaps, most especially, musicians—to look into the works complied by this team (again, check out chbooks.info). As the late great alto saxophonist Jackie McLean said to me in the 1990s, “I tell my students, ‘It’s an important tradition and you have to go back and hear this music and learn its language all the way through. How are you going to know what’s new to play, if you haven’t listened to everything that’s old?’”
“[New Orleans To Texas] covers the connection between those two important areas of African-American jazz and blues development during the nineteen-twenties and thirties. The book is in three sections: the first, Old New Orleans style, covers the recording of both jazz and blues bands and performers, in the Crescent City and on tour, through the twenties and thirties; from Armand Piron to Joe Robichaux both of whom recorded during trips to New York, through all those who were captured in the City itself, a wealth of fine music by bands which entertained the indigenous population both black and white. The second features those artistes who were recorded in Dallas, Texas during the late twenties; artistes who performed for their fellows in ‘Deep Ellum’, the center of black entertainment and who were recorded there in their regular venues performing jazz, blues and hokum of a characteristically unique style, often featuring different combinations of a limited number of individuals including a significant number of emigrants from New Orleans, in a variety of combinations. The third section shows the further interaction between jazz and blues, and Mexican music, in San Antonio, Texas, during the thirties, before the local styles were submerged by the influence of the northern cities, which was spread by the radio and gramophone and by movement of population. Each section is enhanced by a comprehensive Discography and our usual related illustrations and label scans. For the Texas element we are privileged to have the involvement of the distinguished piano blues expert Michael Hortig as well as our regular collaborator Richard Rains and the Foreword is by Paul Swinton, proprietor of Frog Records and editor of the periodical Frog Annual, on whose pages some preliminary research matter relating to our subject appeared. New Orleans To Texas, as is usual with our publications, is accompanied by a complimentary CD featuring music relating to the subject matter.”
Photographs, illustrations, notes, discography, bibliography, CD.
Jason Berry, City of a Million Dreams: A History of New Orleans at Year 300 (University of North Carolina Press) “delivers a character-driven history of New Orleans at its tricentennial. Chronicling cycles of invention, struggle, death, and rebirth, Berry reveals the city's survival as a triumph of diversity, its map-of-the-world neighborhoods marked by resilience despite hurricanes, epidemics, fires, and floods.
Berry orchestrates a parade of vibrant personalities, from the founder Bienville, a warrior emblazoned with snake tattoos; to Governor William C. C. Claiborne, General Andrew Jackson, and Pere Antoine, an influential priest and secret agent of the Inquisition; Sister Gertrude Morgan, a street evangelist and visionary artist of the 1960s; and Michael White, the famous clarinetist who remade his life after losing everything in Hurricane Katrina. The textured profiles of this extraordinary cast furnish a dramatic narrative of the beloved city, famous the world over for mysterious rituals as people dance when they bury their dead.”
“This is a dream of a book, deftly organized, fluidly written, and compelling.” Garry Wills, author of Venice: Lion City
“Every New Orleanian, including this one, possesses a cultural arrogance that makes us believe our city is more colorful and interesting than your city. We've been taught since we were children that New Orleans has the most rich and nuanced history of any city in the United States. Now that Jason Berry has written this masterful work, I no longer believe my city is more interesting than yours — I know it. Read this book so you can agree with me.” James Carville
Photographs, notes, index.
Val Wilmer, As Serious As Your Life: Black Music and the Free Jazz Revolution, 1957–1977 (Serpent's Tail Classics), Foreword by Richard Williams.
“In this classic account of the new black music of the 1960s and 70s, celebrated photographer and jazz historian Val Wilmer tells the story of how a generation of revolutionary musicians established black music as the true vanguard of American culture. Placing the achievements of African-American artists such as Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Sun Ra in their broader political and social context, Wilmer evokes an era of extraordinary innovation and experimentation that continues to inspire musicians today. As vital now as when it was first published in 1977, As Serious As Your Lifeis the essential story of one of the most dynamic musical movements of the twentieth century.”
“Val Wilmer is an internationally acclaimed photographer, journalist, author and black-music historian who has been documenting African-American music since 1959. In that time she has interviewed and photographed almost every significant figure in post-war jazz, blues and R&B, from Louis Armstrong and Thelonious Monk to Sun Ra and Albert Ayler and Muddy Waters to Aretha Franklin. As a photographer, her work features in the permanent collections of the British Library, the V&A Museum and the National Portrait Gallery; as a writer and historian, she has contributed to the Oxford Dictionary Of National Biography and the New Grove Dictionary Of Jazz. She lives in London.”
“This book saved me from giving up. Even though the jazz musicians Wilmer wrote about were mostly male, their approach to music making, their passion and their activism resonated with me and showed me a way to move forward musically.” Viv Albertine. “The best of those books that found evidence of a black revolution or resurgence in the musical achievements of Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler and others.” Guardian. “A very powerful and proud black book . . . it sings the praise-song of the procreators of the new music and their direct descendantsCoda. “An exceptionally illuminating book on jazz now and on music to come. Indeed, it's one of the relatively few indispensable books about America’s classical music.” Nat Hentoff. “A fascinating document, full of the energy of political struggle.”Socialist Review. “A masterpiece of jazz history. It charts the development of the new black music, delving deep into the lives, minds and politics of the people behind it.” BBC Radio 3.
“Fascinating snapshot.” The Wire.
“A classic . . . . Jam-packed with gems.” Cerys Matthews BBC Radio 6Music.
“A social history of the free jazz movement from its beginnings in the late 1950s. As serious, and necessary, as ever.” Village Voice.
“One of the foremost chroniclers of African-American musical culture Spectator. “One of the most important and exciting books ever written about jazz. It's essential.”Stereogum.
Photographs, notes, “Biographies,” bibliography, index.
Nate Chinen’s Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century (Pantheon) “gives us an invigorating, richly detailed portrait of the artists and events that have shaped the music of our time. Grounded in authority and brimming with style, Playing Changesis the first book to take the measure of this exhilarating moment: it is a compelling argument for the resiliency of the art form and a rejoinder to any claims about its calcification or demise. . . . Woven throughout the book is a vibrant cast of characters—from the saxophonists Steve Coleman and Kamasi Washington to the pianists Jason Moran and Vijay Iyer to the bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding—who have exerted an important influence on the scene. This is an adaptive new music for a complex new reality, and Playing Changes is the definitive guide.”
Nate Chinen has been writing about jazz for more than twenty years. He spent a dozen of them working as a critic for The New York Times and helmed a long-running column for Jazz Times. As the director of editorial content at WBGO, he works with the multiplatform program Jazz Night in America and contributes a range of coverage to NPR Music. An eleven-time winner of the Helen Dance—Robert Palmer Award for Excellence in writing presented by the Jazz Journalists Association, Chinen is also co-author of Myself Among Others: A Life in Music, the autobiography of impresario George Wein. He lives in Beacon, New York, with his wife and two daughters.
“Brilliant. Incisive. Jazz lives on and on and on, folks.” Sonny Rollins
“The 129 Essential Albums of the Twenty-First Century (so far)”, notes, index.
DC Jazz: Stories of Jazz Music in Washington, DC (Georgetown University Press), Maurice Jackson and Blair A. Ruble, editors, “presents a collection of original and fascinating stories about the DC jazz scene throughout its history, including a portrait of the cultural hotbed of Seventh and U Streets, the role of jazz in desegregating the city, a portrait of the great Duke Ellington'stime in DC, notable women in DC jazz, and the seminal contributions of the University of District of Columbia and Howard University to the scene. The book also includes three jazz poems by celebrated Washington, DC, poet E. Ethelbert Miller. Collectively, these stories and poems underscore the deep connection between creativity and place. A co-publishing initiative with the Historical Society of Washington, DC, the book includes over thirty museum-quality photographs and a guide to resources for learning more about DC jazz.”
Photographs, notes, index.
J. Samuel Walker’s Most of 14th Street Is Gone: The Washington, DC Riots of 1968 (Oxford University Press) “takes an in-depth look at the causes and consequences of the Washington, DC riots of 1968. It shows the conditions that existed in Washington, DC's low-income neighborhoods, setting the stage for the disorders that began after Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder. It also traces the growing fears produced by the outbreaks of serious riots in many cities during the mid-1960s. The centerpiece of the book is a detailed account of the riots that raged in Washington, DC from the perspectives of rioters, victims, law enforcement officials, soldiers, and government leaders. The destruction was so extensive that parts of the city were described as "smoldering ruins block after block." Walker analyzes the reasons for the riots and the lessons that authorities drew from them. He also provides an overview of the struggle that the city of Washington, DC faced in recovering from the effects of the 1968 disorders. Finally, he considers why serious riots have been so rare in Washington, DC and other cities since 1968. Walker's timely and sensitive examination of a community, a city, and a country rocked by racial tension, violence, and frustration speaks not only to this nation's past but to its present.”
“Samuel Walker's Most of 14th Street Is Gone details the tick tock of events that occurred during the Washington, DC riots of 1968. . . . Walker painstakingly retraces the steps and missteps, of those days that sent our nation's capital up in flames 50 years ago.” Colbert I. King, Washington Post
Photographs, notes, index.
Todd S. Purdue’s Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution (Henry Holt and Co.) is “A revelatory portrait of the creative partnership that transformed musical theater and provided the soundtrack to the American Century. They stand at the apex of the great age of songwriting, the creators of the classic Broadway musicals Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music, whose songs have never lost their popularity or emotional power. Even before they joined forces, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II had written dozens of Broadway shows, but together they pioneered a new art form: the serious musical play. Their songs and dance numbers served to advance the drama and reveal character, a sharp break from the past and the template on which all future musicals would be built. Though different in personality and often emotionally distant from each other, Rodgers and Hammerstein presented an unbroken front to the world and forged much more than a songwriting team; their partnership was also one of the most profitable and powerful entertainment businesses of their era. They were cultural powerhouses whose work came to define postwar America on stage, screen, television, and radio. But they also had their failures and flops, and more than once they feared they had lost their touch. Todd S. Purdum’s portrait of these two men, their creative process, and their groundbreaking innovations will captivate lovers of musical theater, lovers of the classic American songbook, and young lovers wherever they are. He shows that what Rodgers and Hammerstein wrought was truly something wonderful.”
“Affectionate and richly researched. . . . Something Wonderful offers a fresh look at the milieu and circumstances that contributed to the creation of some of the musical theater’s greatest and most enduring treasures. . . . In giving us access to the world that gave birth to them, Purdum’s authoritative and ultimately moving book brings these masterpieces to life with bracing clarity.” Jason Robert Brown, The New York Times Book Review(Editor's Choice)
Photographs, notes, bibliography, index.
Beth Genné, Dance Me a Song: Astaire, Balanchine, Kelly, and the American Film Musical (Oxford University Press). “Dancer-choreographer-directors Fred Astaire, George Balanchine and Gene Kelly and their colleagues helped to develop a distinctively modern American film-dance style and recurring dance genres for the songs and stories of the American musical. Freely crossing stylistic and class boundaries, their dances were rooted in the diverse dance and music cultures of European immigrants and African-American migrants who mingled in jazz age America. The new technology of sound cinema let them choreograph and fuse camera movement, light, and color with dance and music. Preserved intact for the largest audiences in dance history, their works continue to influence dance and film around the world. This book centers them and their colleagues within the history of dance (where their work has been marginalized) as well as film tracing their development from Broadway to Hollywood (1924-58) and contextualizing them within the American history and culture of their era.
“What this book does is vitally important work in illuminating that uniquely American genre, the movie musical. It shows that the outlaw style of dance at the heart of it was created by freeform borrowings from both so-called highbrow end of the art and so-called lowbrow. In fact, Genné brings together not only styles but artists who don't usually meet in the same book -- like Balanchine and Astaire. With lucid and exuberant prose, she throws new light not only on the great dance-makers like Balanchine, Astaire, Kelly, but on their usually unsung but vital collaborators -- composers, arrangers, assistants, cameramen and a host of others who brought live dance to the big screen.” Elizabeth Kendall, author of Balanchine and the Lost Muse: Revolution and the Making of a Choreographer.
Photographs, notes, bibliography, index.
Frank Lehman’s Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema (Oxford University Press) “explores the inner workings of film music, bringing together tools from music theory, musicology, and music psychology in this first ever book-length analytical study of this culturally central repertoire. Harmony, and especially chromaticism, is emblematic of the ‘film music sound,’ and it is often used to evoke that most cinematic of feelings-wonder. To help parse this familiar but complex musical style, Hollywood Harmony offers a first-of-its kind introduction to neo-Riemannian theory, a recently developed and versatile method of understanding music as a dynamic and transformational process, rather than a series of inert notes on a page. This application of neo-Riemannian theory to film music is perfect way in for curious newcomers, while also constituting significant scholarly contribution to the larger discipline of music theory. Author Frank Lehman draws from his extensive knowledge of cinematic history with case-studies that range from classics of Golden Age Hollywood to massive contemporary franchises to obscure cult-films. Special emphasis is placed on scores for major blockbusters such as Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Inception. With over a hundred meticulously transcribed music examples and more than two hundred individual movies discussed, Hollywood Harmony will fascinate any fan of film and music.”
“Hollywood Harmonybrings analysis of film music fully into the present. Sophisticated theoretical modeling of associations and effects in the currently prevalent triadic style of underscore practice combines with close readings that not only offer fresh insights but also an over-the-composer's-shoulder immediacy.” David Neumeyer, Professor Emeritus of Music, The University of Texas at Austin and co-author of Hearing the Movies.
Musical scores, notes, bibliography, multimedia index, index.
Katherine Spring’s Saying It With Songs: Popular Music and the Coming of Sound to Hollywood Cinema (Oxford University Press) “considers how the increasing interdependence of Hollywood studios and Tin Pan Alley music publishing firms influenced the commercial and narrative functions of popular songs. While most scholarship on film music of the period focuses on adaptations of Broadway musicals, this book examines the functions of songs in a variety of non-musical genres, including melodramas, romantic comedies, Westerns, prison dramas, and action-adventure films, and shows how filmmakers tested and refined their approach to songs in order to reconcile the spectacle of song performance, the classical norms of storytelling, and the conventions of background orchestral scoring from the period of silent cinema. Written for film and music scholars alike as well as for general readers, Saying It With Songsilluminates the origins of the popular song score aesthetic of American cinema.”
“Combining archival research with impressive scholarship, Spring offers a stimulating, provocative, and often paradigm-shifting study of how popular music shaped the very definition of cinema in its transformation from a silent to a sound medium. Lucid and lively, a must-read for anyone interested in the convergence of film and popular song in Hollywood.” Kathryn Kalinak, author of Settling the Score: Music and the Classical Hollywoodand Film Music: A Very Short Introduction.
Photographs, notes, bibliography, index.
The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical (Oxford University Press), editedby Robert Gordon and Olaf Jubin, “provides a comprehensive academic survey of British musical theatre offering both a historical account of the musical's development from 1728 and a range of in-depth critical analyses of the unique forms and features of British musicals, which explore the aesthetic values and sociocultural meanings of a tradition that initially gave rise to the American musical and later challenged its modern pre-eminence. After a consideration of how John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728) created a prototype for eighteenth-century ballad opera, the book focuses on the use of song in early nineteenth century theatre, followed by a sociocultural analysis of the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan; it then examines Edwardian and interwar musical comedies and revues as well as the impact of Rodgers and Hammerstein on the West End, before analyzing the new forms of the postwar British musical from The Boy Friend(1953) to Oliver!(1960). One section of the book examines the contributions of key twentieth century figures including Noel Coward, Ivor Novello, Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Webber, director Joan Littlewood and producer Cameron Macintosh, while a number of essays discuss both mainstream and alternative musicals of the 1960s and 1970s and the influence of the pop industry on the creation of concept recordings such as Jesus Christ Superstar(1970) and Les Misérables(1980). There is a consideration of “jukebox” musicals such as Mamma Mia!(1999), while essays on overtly political shows such as Billy Elliot(2005) are complemented by those on experimental musicals like Jerry Springer: the Opera(2003) and London Road(2011) and on the burgeoning of Black and Asian British musicals in both the West End and subsidized venues. The Oxford Handbook of the British Musicaldemonstrates not only the unique qualities of British musical theatre but also the vitality and variety of British musicals today.”
As Professor of Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London, Robert Gordon established the first MA in Musical Theatre for writers and producers in Europe. He has worked as a playwright, director, actor and critic and is author of Pinter's Theatre of Power, Stoppard: Text and Performance, The Purpose of Playing, co-author of British Musicals since 1950 and editor of the Oxford Handbook of Sondheim Studies.
Olaf Rubin is Reader in Media Studies and Musical Theatre at Regent's University London; he has written, co-written and co-edited several books in the area of popular culture, the mass media and musical theatre, both in English and in German, among them studies on the dubbing and subtitling of Hollywood musicals for the German market and a comparative analysis of American, British, German and Austrian reviews of the musicals of Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
“The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical as a whole represents a highly distinguished level of scholarship and acumen. This is a volume that demonstrates the diversity, inherent social awareness, and musical and dramatic distinctiveness of the British musical.” NABMSA Reviews.
“The editors provide an extensive introduction to help the reader identify trends and patterns within the development of the art form, including the effect that London's West End has had on Broadway (and vice versa). To its credit, the book also explores the development of black musicals, Asian musicals, and experimental works. Of special note are essays about producer Cameron Macintosh, Noel Coward, and marketing trends targeting multiple generations of theatergoers. Though the level of writing varies greatly from essay to essay, the book as a whole provides an excellent examination of a monumental theatrical form.” E.C. Skiles, Lone Star College-Kingwood, Choice.
Photographs, illustrations, bibliography, index.
Ted Gioia has written half a shelf or so of seminal and essential books on jazz, the blues, work songs, and the American Song Book. Now out in paperback, his 2015 Love Songs: The Hidden History (Oxford University Press) “uncovers the unexplored story of the love song for the first time. Drawing on two decades of research, Gioia presents the full range of love songs, from the fertility rites of ancient cultures to the sexualized YouTube videos of the present day. The book traces the battles over each new insurgency in the music of love—whether spurred by wandering scholars of medieval days or by four lads from Liverpool in more recent times.”
Notes, bibliography, index.
Questlovle’s Creative Quest (Ecco/Harper Collins) “synthesizes all the creative philosophies, lessons, and stories he’s heard from the many creators and collaborators in his life, and reflects on his own experience, to advise readers and fans on how to consider creativity and where to find it. He addresses many topics—what it means to be creative, how to find a mentor and serve as an apprentice, the wisdom of maintaining a creative network, coping with critics and the foibles of success, and the specific pitfalls of contemporary culture—all in the service of guiding admirers who have followed his career and newcomers not yet acquainted with his story. Whether discussing his own life or channeling the lessons he’s learned from forefathers such as George Clinton, collaborators like D’Angelo, or like-minded artists including Ava DuVernay, David Byrne, Björk, and others, Questlove speaks with the candor and enthusiasm that fans have come to expect. Creative Quest is many things—above all, a wise and wide-ranging conversation around the eternal mystery of creativity. Questlove—musician, bandleader, designer, producer, culinary entrepreneur, professor, and all-around cultural omnivore—shares his wisdom on the topics of inspiration and originality in a one-of-a-kind guide to living your best creative life.”
“When Questlove says he’s going to do something, he will find out how to do whatever that is, and become a master at it. I can’t think of a person more suited to write a book about being creative.” Jimmy Fallon
Index.
Michael Azerrad, Rock Critic Law: 101 Unbreakable Rules for Writing Badly About Music (Dey Street Books). “One of the finest music writers today, Michael Azerrad has catalogued the shortcuts, lazy metaphors and uninspired prose that so many of his beloved colleagues all too regularly rely on to fill column inches. In 2014, he began his wickedly droll Twitter feed @RockCriticLaw to expose and make fun of this word-hash. Now, he consolidates these ‘Laws’ into one witty, comprehensive and fully illustrated volume. All 101 Rock Critic Laws are accompanied by original illustrations from Ed Fotheringham, beloved Seattle scenester and highly regarded artist who has created album covers for everyone from, well, seminal grunge band Mudhoney to iconic jazz label Verve Records, as well as illustrations for The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and more, making this book a must-have for music lovers everywhere. A unique appreciation of music writing from one of its own, Rock Critic Law irreverently captures all the passion and furor of fandom.”
“Michael Azerradis a music journalist, author, and musician. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and many others.”
Speaking for Ourselves: Conversations on Life, Music, and Autism (Oxford University Press) by Michael B. Bakan, with Mara Chasar, et alii, “engages in deep conversations--some spanning the course of years--with ten fascinating and very different individuals who share two basic things in common: an autism spectrum diagnosis and a life in which music plays a central part. These conversations offer profound insights into the intricacies and intersections of music, autism, neurodiversity, and life in general, not from an autistic point of view, but rather from many different autistic points of view. They invite readers to partake of a rich tapestry of words, ideas, images, and musical sounds that speak to both the diversity of autistic experience and the common humanity we all share.”
“This is ground breaking research that could lead to real improvements in the lives of people with autism.” Derryck Smith, MD, FRCPC, Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia.
Bibliography, index.
Dana Gooley’s Fantasies of Improvisation: Free Playing in Nineteenth-Century Music (Oxford University Press) is “The first history of keyboard improvisation in European music in the postclassical and romantic periods, Fantasies of Improvisation: Free Playing in Nineteenth-Century Musicdocuments practices of improvisation on the piano and the organ, with a particular emphasis on free fantasies and other forms of free playing. Case studies of performers such as Abbé Vogler, J. N. Hummel, Ignaz Moscheles, Robert Schumann, Carl Loewe, and Franz Liszt describe in detail the motives, intentions, and musical styles of the nineteenth century's leading improvisers. Grounded in primary sources, the book further discusses the reception and valuation of improvisational performances by colleagues, audiences, and critics, which prompted many keyboardists to stop improvising. Author Dana Gooley argues that amidst the decline of improvisational practices in the first half of the nineteenth century there emerged a strong and influential “idea” of improvisation as an ideal or perfect performance. This idea, spawned and nourished by romanticism, preserved the aesthetic, social, and ethical values associated with improvisation, calling into question the supposed triumph of the “work.”
“Classical improvisation is making a comeback, and in timely fashion we can now read its remarkable history. Prof. Gooley has discovered lively contemporary accounts of pianists performing free fantasies on stage for the masses, in salons for elites, and in private for personal inspiration. The big names are all there--Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Mendelssohn--as are dozens of names less well known but hailed as great improvisors in their own day. Through diaries, reviews, letters, and biographies we can gauge the thoughts of both sides of what were by all accounts emotionally powerful interactions between musicians and their audiences.” Robert O. Gjerdingen, Northwestern University.
Musical illustrations, index.
Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina: A Guide to Music Sites, Artists, and Traditions of the Mountains and Foothills (University of North Carolina Press), by Fred C. Fussell, with Steve Kruger. “This updated second edition adds three new music venues, along with updated information on the almost sixty music sites in Western North Carolina profiled in the previous edition. Also included are new full-color photos, two new artist profiles, and a CD of twenty-six classic songs from the mountains and the foothills. The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina are the heart of a region where traditional music and dance are performed and celebrated as nowhere else in America. This guide puts readers on the trail to discover many sites where the unique musical legacy thrives, covering bluegrass and stringband music, clogging, and other traditional forms of music and dance. The book includes stories of the legendary music of the Blue Ridge Mountains, maps, and contact information for the featured sites, as well as color illustrations and profiles of prominent musicians and music traditions. Chapters are organized county by county, and sidebars include interviews with and profiles of performers, information about various performance styles, and a brief history of Blue Ridge music.”
“For anyone with a taste for traditional song and dance. . . . Included is a CD with more than two dozen songs, representing the diverse styles profiled in the text. It's a fitting soundtrack whether you're sitting back reading or hitting the road.” WNC Magazine.
Index.
Jack Sullivan, New Orleans Remix(American Made Music Series) (University Press of Mississippi). “Since the 1990s, New Orleans has been experiencing its greatest musical renaissance since Louis Armstrong. Brass band, funk, hip hop, Mardi Gras Indian, zydeco, and other styles are rocking the city in new neighborhood bars far from the Bourbon Street tourist scene. Even "neotraditional" jazz players have emerged in startling numbers, making the old sound new for a younger generation. In this book, Jack Sullivan shines the light on superb artists little known to the general public--Leroy Jones, Shamarr Allen, Kermit Ruffins, Topsy Chapman, Aurora Nealand, the Brass-A-Holics. He introduces as well a surge of female, Asian, and other previously marginalized groups that are making the vibe more inclusive than ever. New Orleans Remixcovers artists who have broken into the national spotlight--the Rebirth Brass Band, Trombone Shorty, Jon Batiste--and many creators who are still little known. Based on dozens of interviews and archival documents, this book delivers their perspectives on how they view their present in relation to a vital past. The city of New Orleans has always held fiercely to the old even as it invented the new, a secret of its dynamic success. Marching tunes mingled with jazz, traditional jazz with bebop, Mardi Gras Indian percussion with funk, all producing wonderfully bewildering yet viable fusions. This book identifies the unique catalytic power of the city itself. Why did New Orleans spawn America's greatest vernacular music, and why does its musical fire still burn so fiercely, long after the great jazz eruptions in Chicago, Kansas City, and others declined? How does a tradition remain intensely creative for generations? How has the huge influx of immigrants to New Orleans, especially since Hurricane Katrina, contributed to the city's current musical harmony? This book seeks answers through the ideas of working musicians who represent very different sensibilities in voices often as eloquent as their music.”
“Jack Sullivan can do it all. Whether writing about Victorian ghost stories, reviewing modern fiction, tracing the impact of American music on Europe, or analyzing the film scores of Alfred Hitchcock classics, this versatile scholar-critic brings to bear a deep knowledge of his subjects and a prose style of rare suppleness and grace. Yet as important as Sullivan's earlier books have been, this loving history of music in New Orleans, packed with first-person accounts of the contemporary ‘remix’ that began in the 1990s, may be his masterpiece, an irresistible blend of research and reporting that is as entertaining as it is insightful. You will read it with delight.” Michael Dirda, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and author of Classics for Pleasure, Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting, Living with Books, and other books about books.
Photographs, notes, index.
Peter J. Marina, Down and Out in New Orleans: Transgressive Living in the Informal Economy(Studies in Transgression) (Columbia University Press). “In the years since Hurricane Katrina, the modern-day bohemians of New Orleans have found themselves forced to the edges of poverty by the new tourist economy. Modeling his work after George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, the sociologist and ethnographer Peter J. Marina explores this unfamiliar side of the gentrifying “new” New Orleans. In 1920s Paris, Orwell witnessed an influx of locals and outsiders seeking authenticity while struggling to live with bourgeois society. Marina finds a similar ambivalence in New Orleans: a tourism-dependent city whose commerce caters largely to well-heeled natives and upper-class travelers, where many creative locals and wanderers have remained outsiders, willingly or otherwise. Marina does not merely interview these spirited urban misfits―he lives among them. Down and Out in New Orleans follows their journeys, depicting the lives of those on the social fringes of a resilient city. Marina finds work as a bartender, street mime, and poet. Along the way, he visits homeless shelters, squats in abandoned buildings, attends rituals in cemeteries, and befriends writers, musicians, occultists, and artists as they look for creative solutions to the contradictory demands of late capitalism. Marina does for New Orleans what Orwell did for Paris a century earlier, providing a rigorous, unrelenting, and original glimpse into the subcultures of a city in rapid change.”
“Peter J. Marina provides an outstanding introduction to the sociology of transgression through his fascinating portrayal of life on the edge in post-Katrina New Orleans. His sociological insight, ethnographic ability, and love of the city uniquely position him to write about the sociology of living ‘down and out’ in the Crescent City.” David Gladstone, University of New Orleans.
Photographs, notes, index.
Albert Murray: Collected Essays & Memoirs: The Omni-Americans, South to a Very Old Place, The Hero and the Blues, Stomping the Blues, The Blue Devils of Nada, From the Briarpatch, and Other Writings (Library of America), Paul Devlinand Henry Gates Jr., editors. “In his 1970 classic The Omni-Americans, Albert Murray (1916–2013) took aim at protest writers and social scientists who accentuated the ‘pathology’ of race in American life. Against narratives of marginalization and victimhood, Murray argued that black art and culture, particularly jazz and blues, stand at the very headwaters of the American mainstream, and that much of what is best in American art embodies the ‘blues-hero tradition’— a heritage of grace, wit, and inspired improvisation in the face of adversity. Murray went on to refine these ideas in The Blue Devils of Nadaand From the Briarpatch File, and all three landmark collections of essays are gathered here for the first time, together with Murray’s memoir South to a Very Old Place, his brilliant lecture series The Hero and the Blues, his masterpiece of jazz criticism Stomping the Blues, and eight previously uncollected pieces.
“Albert Murray's best nonfiction has been gathered in a plump and welcome volume from the Library of America. . . . His writing about racism can prickle your skin. . . . To paraphrase Murray's praise of Ellison's Invisible Man, reading this book is like watching someone take a 12-bar blues song and score it for a full orchestra.” Dwight Garner, The New York Times
Chronology, notes, index.
Joel Dinerstein’sThe Origins of Cool in Postwar America (University of Chicago Press) “is the first work to trace the history of cool during the Cold War by exploring the intersections of film noir, jazz, existential literature, Method acting, blues, and rock and roll. Dinerstein reveals that they came together to create something completely new—and that something is cool. It was a new word and a new way to be, and in a single generation, it became the supreme compliment of American culture. The Origins of Cool in Postwar America uncovers the hidden history of this concept and its new set of codes that came to define a global attitude and style. As Joel Dinerstein reveals in this dynamic book, cool began as a stylish defiance of racism, a challenge to suppressed sexuality, a philosophy of individual rebellion, and a youthful search for social change. Through eye-opening portraits of iconic figures, Dinerstein illuminates the cultural connections and artistic innovations among Lester Young, Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Jack Kerouac, Albert Camus, Marlon Brando, and James Dean, among others. We eavesdrop on conversations among Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Miles Davis, and on a forgotten debate between Lorraine Hansberry and Norman Mailer over the "white Negro" and black cool. We come to understand how the cool worlds of Beat writers and Method actors emerged from the intersections of film noir, jazz, and existentialism. Out of this mix, Dinerstein sketches nuanced definitions of cool that unite concepts from African-American and Euro-American culture: the stylish stoicism of the ethical rebel loner; the relaxed intensity of the improvising jazz musician; the effortless, physical grace of the Method actor. To be cool is not to be hip and to be hot is definitely not to be cool.
Photographs, notes, index.
Robert Christgau’s Is It Still Good to Ya?: Fifty Years of Rock Criticism, 1967-2017 (Duke University Press) “sums up the career of longtime Village Voice stalwart Robert Christgau, who for half a century has been America's most widely respected rock critic, honoring a music he argues is only more enduring because it's sometimes simple or silly. While compiling historical overviews going back to Dionysus and the gramophone along with artist analyses that range from Louis Armstrong to M.I.A., this definitive collection also explores pop's African roots, response to 9/11, and evolution from the teen music of the ’50s to an art form compelled to confront mortality as its heroes pass on. A final section combines searching obituaries of David Bowie, Prince, and Leonard Cohen with awed farewells to Bob Marley and Ornette Coleman.”
“Robert Christgau is music writing’s great omnivore, and his appetite hasn't diminished in the sixth and seventh decades of his life. The twenty-first century has been a tumultuous one in popular music and Christgau brings his gimlet-eyed wit, deep knowledge, and inimitable heart to this era with the same verve he had as a countercultural kid. Long may the Dean live; as this collection proves with ease, we still need him.” Ann Powers
Index.
Shake It Up: Great American Writing on Rock and Pop from Elvis to Jay Z (A Library of America Special Publication), Jonathan Lethe and Kevin Dettmar, editors, “invites the reader into the tumult and excitement of the rock revolution through fifty landmark pieces by a supergroup of writers on rock in all its variety, from heavy metal to disco, punk to hip-hop. Stanley Booth describes a recording session with Otis Redding; Ellen Willis traces the meteoric career of Janis Joplin; Ellen Sander recalls the chaotic world of Led Zeppelin on tour; Nick Tosches etches a portrait of the young Jerry Lee Lewis; Eve Babitz remembers Jim Morrison. Alongside are Lenny Kaye on acapella and Greg Tate on hip-hop, Vince Aletti on disco and Gerald Early on Motown; Robert Christgau on Prince, Nelson George on Marvin Gaye, Luc Sante on Bob Dylan, Hilton Als on Michael Jackson, Anthony DeCurtis on the Rolling Stones, Kelefa Sanneh on Jay Z. The story this anthology tells is a ongoing one: “it’s too early,” editors Jonathan Lethem and Kevin Dettmar note, “for canon formation in a field so marvelously volatile—a volatility that mirrors, still, that of pop music itself, which remains smokestack lightning. The writing here attempts to catch some in a bottle.”
“Pop writing, at its best, doesn’t know the difference between desire and theory, which is precisely the reason for its power and its persistence. Lethem and Dettmar’s expansive anthology renders this wild, polychrome tradition, and the state of play today, with gusto.” Ben Ratliff, author of Every Song Ever.
Sources, index.
Saul Austerlitz’s Just a Shot Away: Peace, Love, and Tragedy with the Rolling Stones at Altamont (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press) “tells the story of “Woodstock West,” where the Rolling Stones hoped to end their 1969 American tour triumphantly with the help of the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, and 300,000 fans. Instead the concert featured a harrowing series of disasters, starting with the concert’s haphazard planning. The bad acid kicked in early. The Hells Angels, hired to handle security, began to prey on the concertgoers. And not long after the Rolling Stones went on, an 18-year-old African-American named Meredith Hunter was stabbed by the Angels in front of the stage. The show, and the Woodstock high, were over.
Austerlitz shows how Hunter’s death came to symbolize the end of an era while the trial of his accused murderer epitomized the racial tensions that still underlie America. He also finds a silver lining in the concert in how Rolling Stone’s coverage of it helped create a new form of music journalism, while the making of the movie about Altamont, Gimme Shelter, birthed new forms of documentary. Using scores of new interviews with Paul Kantner, Jann Wenner, journalist John Burks, filmmaker Joan Churchill, and many members of the Rolling Stones' inner circle, as well as Meredith Hunter's family, Austerlitz shows that you can’t understand the ‘60s or rock and roll if you don’t come to grips with Altamont.
“Rough, sickening, blasted, detailed. The focus on Meredith Hunter and his family is heroic.” Greil Marcus
“Austerlitz has written the definitive account of this tumultuous moment in American music history.” Ted Gioia, music historian and author of Delta Bluesand The History of Jazz
Photographs, index.
David Weigel’s The Show That Never Ends: The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock (W. W. Norton) is “A deep, detailed, funny and affectionate dive into the history of prog rock.” Edgar Wright, director of Baby Driver“is the definitive story of the extraordinary rise and fall of progressive (‘prog’) rock. Epitomized by such classic, chart-topping bands as Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, and Emerson Lake & Palmer, along with such successors as Rush, Marillion, Asia, Styx, and Porcupine Tree, prog sold hundreds of millions of records. It brought into the mainstream concept albums, spaced-out cover art, crazy time signatures, multi-track recording, and stagecraft so bombastic it was spoofed in the classic movie This Is Spinal TapWith a vast knowledge of what Rolling Stonehas called “the deliciously decadent genre that the punks failed to kill,” access to key people who made the music, and the passion of a true enthusiast, Washington Postnational reporter David Weigel tells the story of prog in all its pomp, creativity, and excess.
Photographs, notes, index.
Roger Steffens, So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley (W. W. Norton), Introduction by Linton Kwesi Johnson. “With unprecedented candor, these interviews tell dramatic, little-known stories, from the writing of some of Marley’s most beloved songs to the Wailers’ violent confrontation involving producer Lee “Scratch” Perry, Bob’s intensive musical training with star singer Johnny Nash and the harrowing assassination attempt at 56 Hope Road in Kingston, which led to Marley’s defiant performance two nights later with a bullet lodged in his arm. Readers witness Marley’s rise to international fame in London, his triumphant visit to Zimbabwe to sing for freedom fighters inspired by his anthems and the devastating moment of his collapse while jogging in New York’s Central Park. Steffens masterfully conducts the story of Marley’s last months, as Marley poignantly sings “Another One Bites the Dust” during the sound check before his final concert in Pittsburgh, followed by his tragic death at the age of thirty-six. So Much Things to Sayexplores major controversies, examining who actually ordered the shooting attack on Hope Road, scrutinizing claims of CIA involvement and investigating why Marley’s fatal cancer wasn’t diagnosed sooner. Featuring Steffens’s own candid photographs of Marley and his circle, this magisterial work preserves an invaluable, transformative slice of music history: the life of the legendary performer who brought reggae to the international stage.”
“If Bob Marley is Jesus in these times, Roger Steffens is Peter.” Carlos Santana
Photographs, index.
Bruce Springsteen: From Asbury Park, to Born To Run, to Born In The USA (Rizzoli/Random House), by David GahrandChris Murrayis “An unprecedented look at a very young Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, from the group’s creation and early New Jersey days to their meteoric rise and seminal Born in the USA tour, in photographs almost all not previously published. David Gahr (1922–2008) was tapped by Columbia Records designer John Berg to shoot cover art for Bruce Springsteen’s second album, The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. Gahr’s earliest photographs of the musician showcase a youthful Springsteen, not even aged twenty-three, in Asbury Park, New Jersey, on the eve of a career breakthrough. Gahr befriended the rising star, and over a span of approximately ten years he photographed Springsteen, both on- and offstage. Rare captures include Springsteen recording music, performing at the cramped venue Bottom Line weeks before the release of his seminal 1975 album Born to Run, and playing to legions of fans during his Born in the USA tour. Bruce Springsteen 1973–1986is an unprecedented look back at Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band on their path to becoming rock legends.”
Rory Stuart, The Rhythm Book: Beginning Notation and Sight-Reading for All Instruments (Hal Leonard). “Rhythms are certainly the largest challenge in reading and writing music. This book makes learning to read and write rhythms easy, teaching you in a step-by-step method starting from the very basics. Supported by recordings of the exercises and worksheets that help you practice the material, you will have all you need to learn quarter note, eighth note, and triplet eighth rhythms, including syncopations. Whether you are an experienced musician who has never learned notation, a total beginner, a vocalist or student of any instrument, or interested in playing or composing any style of music, with The Rhythm Bookyou can build a solid foundation in reading and writing rhythms.”
Mark Whitaker’s Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance (Simon & Schuster) “is a captivating portrait of this unsung community [black Pittsburgh] and a vital addition to the story of black America. It depicts how ambitious Southern migrants were drawn to a steel-making city on a strategic river junction; how they were shaped by its schools and a spirit of commerce with roots in the Gilded Age; and how their world was eventually destroyed by industrial decline and urban renewal. Whitaker takes readers on a rousing, revelatory journey—and offers a timely reminder that Black History is not all bleak.”
“Smoketown brilliantly offers us a chance to see this other black renaissance and spend time with the many luminaries who sparked it . . . . It’s thanks to such a gifted storyteller as Whitaker that this forgotten chapter of American history can finally be told in all its vibrancy and glory.” The New York Times Book Review
Photographs, notes, index.
Jason Borge’s Tropical Riffs: Latin America and the Politics of Jazz (Duke University Press Books) “traces how jazz helped forge modern identities and national imaginaries in Latin America during the mid-twentieth century. Across Latin America jazz functioned as a conduit through which debates about race, sexuality, nation, technology, and modernity raged in newspapers, magazines, literature, and film. For Latin American audiences, critics, and intellectuals—who often understood jazz to stem from social conditions similar to their own—the profound penetration into the fabric of everyday life of musicians like Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker represented the promises of modernity while simultaneously posing a threat to local and national identities. Brazilian antijazz rhetoric branded jazz as a problematic challenge to samba and emblematic of Americanization. In Argentina jazz catalyzed discussions about musical authenticity, race, and national culture, especially in relation to tango. And in Cuba, the widespread popularity of Chano Pozo and Dámaso Pérez Prado popularity challenged the United States' monopoly on jazz. Outlining these hemispheric flows of ideas, bodies, and music, Borge elucidates how "America's art form" was, and remains, a transnational project and a collective idea.”
“Tropical Riffs is a dazzling transnational cultural history destined to galvanize the next generation of both jazz studies and Latin American studies. Erudite, stylish, and every bit as cosmopolitan as its subject, Jason Borge's book brilliantly conceives of Latin American jazz as a thick cultural matrix connecting the music, film, journalism, criticism, and visual art communities of Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, New York City, and Los Angeles. Few books have taught me so much.” John Gennari, author of Flavor and Soul: Italian America at Its African American Edge
“Elegantly written and insightfully argued, Jason Borge's book considers the shifting local meanings surrounding jazz for Latin American critics and intellectuals of the 1920s and beyond, often framed by larger debates surrounding racial tension, US foreign policy, modernization, and cultural nationalism.” Robin D. Moore, coauthor of Danzon: Circum-Caribbean Dialogues in Music and Dance
Photographs, illustrations, bibliography, notes, index.
Elena A. Schneider’s,The Occupation of Havana: War, Trade, and Slavery in the Atlantic World (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture/University of North Carolina Press) “offers a nuanced and poignantly human account of the British capture and Spanish recovery of this coveted Caribbean city. The book explores both the interconnected histories of the British and Spanish empires and the crucial role played by free people of color and the enslaved in the creation and defense of Havana. Tragically, these men and women would watch their promise of freedom and greater rights vanish in the face of massive slave importation and increased sugar production upon Cuba's return to Spanish rule. By linking imperial negotiations with events in Cuba and their consequences, Elena Schneider sheds new light on the relationship between slavery and empire at the dawn of the Age of Revolutions.”
“During the eighteenth century, Havana was the crown jewel of the Spanish Caribbean, a place of dazzling wealth and formidable power. Behind this impressive facade, however, lay a more complicated history of war, trade, and slavery that Havana shared with its British neighbors. Elena Schneider brings this entangled Anglo-Spanish history to life as no historian before her has done. The result is a landmark in the history of the British and Spanish Atlantic worlds.” Eliga Gould, University of New Hampshire
Illustrations, index.
Unseen: Unpublished Black History from the New York Times Photo Archives (Black Dog & Leventhal), Dana Canedy, Darcy Eveleigh, Damien Cave, Rachel L. Swarns, editors.
Hundreds of stunning images from black history have long been buried in The New York Timesarchives. None of them were published by The Times--until now. Unseen uncovers these never-before published photographs and tells the stories behind them.
It all started with Times photo editor Darcy Eveleigh discovering dozens of these photographs. She and three colleagues, Dana Canedy, Damien Cave, and Rachel L. Swarns, began exploring the history behind them, and subsequently chronicling them in a series entitled “Unpublished Black History,” that ran in print and online editions of The Times in February 2016. It garnered 1.7 million views on The Times website and thousands of comments from readers. This book includes those photographs and many more, among them: a 27-year-old Jesse Jackson leading an anti-discrimination rally of in Chicago, Rosa Parks arriving at a Montgomery Courthouse in Alabama a candid behind-the-scenes shot of Aretha Franklin backstage at the Apollo Theater, Ralph Ellison on the streets of his Manhattan neighborhood, the firebombed home of Malcolm X, Myrlie Evans and her children at the funeral of her slain husband, Medgar, a wheelchair-bound Roy Campanella at the razing of Ebbets Field.
Were the photos--or the people in them--not deemed newsworthy enough? Did the images not arrive in time for publication? Were they pushed aside by words at an institution long known as the Gray Lady? Eveleigh, Canedy, Cave, and Swarms explore all these questions and more in this one-of-a-kind book.
Unseen dives deep into The Times photo archives--known as the Morgue--to showcase this extraordinary collection of photographs and the stories behind them.”
Darcy Eveleigh is a photo editor The New York Times and the creator and editor of The Lively Morgue, a Times blog and Tumblrseries. Follow Darcy on Twitter @DarcyNYT.
Unseen’s editors:
Dana Canedy is the administrator for Pulitzer Prizes. She is a former senior editor at The New York Timesand was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for “How Race Is Lived in America,” a series on race relations in the United States. She is the author of A Journal for Jordan: A Story of Love and Honor. Follow Dana on Twitter @DanaCanedy.
Damien Cave is the Australia Bureau Chief for The New York Times. He was formerly the Deputy Editor for Digital on the paper's National desk and a correspondent in Mexico City, Miami, Baghdad, and Newark. Follow Damien on Twitter @DamienCave.
Rachel L. Swarns is a journalist and author who writes about race and race relations as a contributing writer for The New York Times. She is the author of American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama, which was published in 2012. Her upcoming book about Georgetown University's roots in slavery will be published by Random House in 2020. Visit Rachel on Facebook (rachel.l.swarns) and follow her on Twitter @RachelSwarns.
“Maya Angelou said that ‘there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.’ Indeed, there is an agony in our nation that the stories, the voices, and the images of Black Americans are so unknown, untold, and unseen in our wider understanding of history. This bountiful collection of once-unpublished photographs both gives expressive voice to their subjects and helps to relieve this agony, bringing to life a more complete picture of the compelling, complex, and beautiful story that is America.” Cory Booker, U.S. senator and bestselling author of United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good.
“Unseen reminds me of a lost black history version of ‘You Are There,’ told through photographs that The Times commissioned but chose not to print. This book is a vivid account of race relations in America, narrated through images that survived between the spaces of stories, in the gaps, silences, and lacuna buried in the paper's archives. They constitute a remarkably vivid parallel text to the last half century of American history, creating an extraordinarily moving visual narrative of the feelings and actions of black Americans in the striking particularity of black-and-white photography. The book simulates what it would have been like to read The Times each day for the last half century, if the full picture of the African American experience had made the cut. If any book proves that it is never too late to publish ‘all the news’--and images—‘fit to print,’ this is it.” Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author, director of Harvard's Hutchins Center for African American Research, and an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker.
“This book brings the excitement of opening a time capsule, with powerful photographs and searching commentary by an all-star cast that gives us new and original insights into modern African American history.” Michael Beschloss, historian and bestselling author of Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989.
Photographs, list of photographers, index.
Homer,The Odyssey (W. W. Norton), translated by Emily Wilson. “The first great adventure story in the Western canon, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty, and power; about marriage and family; about travelers, hospitality, and the yearning for home. In this fresh, authoritative version―the first English translation of The Odyssey by a woman―this stirring tale of shipwrecks, monsters, and magic comes alive in an entirely new way. Written in iambic pentameter verse and a vivid, contemporary idiom, this engrossing translation matches the number of lines in the Greek original, thus striding at Homer’s sprightly pace and singing with a voice that echoes Homer’s music. A fascinating introduction provides an informative overview of the Bronze Age milieu that produced the epic, the major themes of the poem, the controversies about its origins, and the unparalleled scope of its impact and influence. Maps drawn especially for this volume, a pronunciation glossary, and extensive notes and summaries of each book make this an Odyssey that will be treasured by a new generation of scholars, students, and general readers alike.”
“Emily Wilson has produced a clear, vigorous, sensitive Odyssey that conveys both the grand scale and the individual pathos of this foundational story. This is the most accessible, and yet accurate, translation of Homer’s masterwork that I have ever read.” Susan Wise Bauer, author of The History of the Ancient World.
Introduction, maps, notes, glossary.
Homer,The Odyssey, translated by Anthony Verity (Oxford University Press World's Classics), Introduction and Notes by William Allan. “Homer's Odyssey rivals the Iliad as the greatest poem of Western culture and is perhaps the most influential text of classical literature. This elegant and compelling new translation is accompanied by a full introduction and notes that guide the reader in understanding the poem and the many different contexts in which it was performed and read. Twenty years after setting out to fight in the Trojan War, Odysseus is yet to return home to Ithaca. His household is in disarray: a horde of over 100 disorderly and arrogant suitors are vying to claim Odysseus' wife Penelope, and his young son Telemachus is powerless to stop them. Meanwhile, Odysseus is driven beyond the limits of the known world, encountering countless divine and earthly challenges. But Odysseus is ‘of many wiles’ and his cunning and bravery eventually lead him home, to reclaim both his family and his kingdom.”
“Verity offers an excellent, clear, traditionally literal but avowedly non-poetic [translation].” Colin Burrow, London Review of Books
Introduction, maps, notes, bibliography, index.
Vincent Azoulay,The Tyrant-Slayers of Ancient Athens: A Tale of Two Statues (Oxford University Press), translated by Janet Lloyd. “This investigation relies on a rash bet: to write the biography of two of the most famous statues in Antiquity, the Tyrannicides. Representing the murderers of the tyrant Hipparchus in full action, these statues erected on the Agora of Athens have been in turn worshipped, outraged, and imitated. They have known hours of glory and moments of hardships, which have transformed them into true icons of Athenian democracy. The subject of this book is the remarkable story of this group statue and the ever-changing significance of its tyrant-slaying subjects. The first part of this book, in six chapters, tells the story of the murder of Hipparchus and of the statues of the two tyrannicides from the end of the sixth century to the aftermath of the restoration of democracy in 403. The second part, in three chapters, chronicles the fate and influence of the statues from the fourth century to the end of the Roman Empire. These chapters are followed by an epilogue that reveals new life for the statues in modern art and culture, including how Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union made use of their iconography. By tracing the long trajectory of the tyrannicides-in deed and art-Azoulay provides a rich and fascinating micro-history that will be of interest to readers of classical art and history.”
“Vincent Azoulay's work builds on his predecessors. . . . He offers a comprehensive account of the sources, whether literary, iconographic, historical, or epigraphic. . . . Paul Cartledge offers a stimulating and sympathetic foreword, and the concluding notes and bibliography are exceptionally full and detailed.” Lucilla Burn, Times Literary Supplement
“Vincent Azoulay has written an important and thoroughly engaging object biography of one of the most important monuments in the history of Greek art, which stood for centuries in the Athenian Agora. While much has been written about this group, Azoulay's novel approach is to consider the changing ideas, perceptions, and reception of this monument over the long arc of its history. This study makes an important contribution to the history of honorific statuary and the role of public art in the Greek city.” Sheila Dillon, Duke University
Photographs, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.
David Kinston’s In the Orbit of Love: Affection in Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford University Press) “is about love in the classical world - not erotic passion but the kind of love that binds together intimate members of a family and very close friends, but which may also be extended to include a wider range of individuals for whom we care deeply. The book begins with a discussion of friendship, focusing particularly on the Greek notion that in friendship the identities of two friends all but merge into one. The book then turns to the question of loyalty, and why loyalty seems not to have achieved the status of a virtue in classical thought. The next chapter considers love in relation to generosity, favors, and gratitude. There follows a discussion of grief, which is a symptom of the loss of a loved one. The final chapter treats love as the basis of civic solidarity. In each case, love is at the basis of the relations under examination. In this, the book departs from the more usual analysis of these affective ties in terms of reciprocity, which in one way or another involves an expectation of return. Seen this way, such relationships seem to have a selfish or at least self-centered dimension, as distinct from truly other-regarding attitudes. While it is true that the ancient sources sometimes describe these relations, including friendship, as forms of mutual obligation, there is also a counter strand that emphasizes genuine altruism, and it is this aspect that the book seeks to bring out. A close look at how love drew into its orbit the various relations examined in this book may shed light on some central features not only of ancient habits of thought but also, it is to be hoped, our own.”
“For a long time David Konstan has been our leading interpreter of Greek and Roman friendly love. In this masterful new book, he achieves yet deeper insights, showing how an ideal of disinterested love informs a wider set of values: loyalty, gratitude, grief, and political solidarity. Written with Konstan's sui generis combination of insight, scholarship, philosophical rigor, and grace, In the Orbit of Love simultaneously illuminates and charms.” Martha C. Nussbaum, University of Chicago.
Bibliography, index.
Adrienne Mayor’s Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology (Princeton University Press) is “A groundbreaking account of the earliest expressions of the timeless impulse to create artificial life, Gods and Robots reveals how some of today’s most advanced innovations in robotics and AI were foreshadowed in ancient myth―and how science has always been driven by imagination. This is mythology for the age of AI {artificial intelligence]. As early as Homer, Greeks were imagining robotic servants, animated statues, and even ancient versions of Artificial Intelligence, while in Indian legend, Buddha’s precious relics were defended by robot warriors copied from Greco-Roman designs for real automata. Mythic automata appear in tales about Jason and the Argonauts, Medea, Daedalus, Prometheus, and Pandora, and many of these machines are described as being built with the same materials and methods that human artisans used to make tools and statues. And, indeed, many sophisticated animated devices were actually built in antiquity, reaching a climax with the creation of a host of automata in the ancient city of learning, Alexandria, the original Silicon Valley. The first robot to walk the earth was a bronze giant called Talos. This wondrous machine was created not by MIT Robotics Lab, but by Hephaestus, the Greek god of invention. More than 2,500 years ago, long before medieval automata, and centuries before technology made self-moving devices possible, Greek mythology was exploring ideas about creating artificial life―and grappling with still-unresolved ethical concerns about biotechne, “life through craft.” In this compelling, richly illustrated book, Adrienne Mayor tells the fascinating story of how ancient Greek, Roman, Indian, and Chinese myths envisioned artificial life, automata, self-moving devices, and human enhancements―and how these visions relate to and reflect the ancient invention of real animated machines.”
Oddly, Professor Mayor, a Research Scholar in Stanford University's History and Philosophy of Science and Technology Program, is unfamiliar with Alexander Jones’ A Portable Cosmos: Revealing the Antikythera Mechanism, Scientific Wonder of the Ancient World(Oxford University Press), published in early 2017 (and included in my 2017 roundup https://www.wroyalstokes.com/blog/2017/12/26/a-roundup-by-w-royal-stokes-of-140-or-so-jazz-blues-beyond-and-other-books-published-in-the-past-year-or-so). It is not included in her bibliography and the Antikythera, generally referred to as the first known analogue computer, receives only one brief description in her book.
“This brilliant and incomparable book will astonish readers by showing the real technologies that lie behind ancient mythology. Adrienne Mayor presents fascinating and entertaining stories for pondering the deep questions of artificial life. Gods and Robots is a beautiful book.” M. Norton Wise, Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“The Greeks [Mayor argues] envisioned . . . advanced technological artifacts driven by internal machinery [and] establishes the engineered nature of androids like Talos and Pandora. [Her] close analysis finds echoes of real historical techniques [and] nicely refutes those critics who might claim that artificial life achieved through engineering was an idea beyond the conceptual horizon of the ancients.” William A. Wilson, Weekly Standard
Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.
Christopher C. King’s Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe's Oldest Surviving Folk Music (W. W. Norton & Company) is especially fascinating for me, a former classicist (http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs147/1102932454996/archive/1112415778593.html#LETTER.BLOCK35) whose special author was oral poet Homer. The music that author Christopher C. King chased down in Epirus clearly has some of its roots in ancient Greece, perhaps as accompaniment to Homer as he improvised the Iliad and Odyssey to Eighth Century B.C. audiences. The author’s authority in blues, old time country and mountain music, and other genres of American vernacular music lends his book an additional appeal for those interested in those art forms.
“Lament from Epirusis an unforgettable journey into a musical obsession, which traces a unique genre back to the roots of song itself. As King hunts for two long-lost virtuosos―one of whom may have committed a murder―he also tells the story of the Roma people who pioneered Epirotic folk music and their descendants who continue the tradition today. . . . In a gramophone shop in Istanbul, renowned record collector Christopher C. King uncovered some of the strangest―and most hypnotic―sounds he had ever heard. The 78s were immensely moving, seeming to tap into a primal well of emotion inaccessible through contemporary music. The songs, King learned, were from Epirus, an area straddling southern Albania and northwestern Greece and boasting a folk tradition extending back to the pre-Homeric era. To hear this music is to hear the past. . . . King discovers clues to his most profound questions about the function of music in the history of humanity: What is the relationship between music and language? Why do we organize sound as music? Is music superfluous, a mere form of entertainment, or could it be a tool for survival? King’s journey becomes an investigation into song and dance’s role as a means of spiritual healing―and what that may reveal about music’s evolutionary origins.
“This engaging, well-researched, and peculiar book is not only a work of music criticism or a philosophical rumination on the meaning of music―it’s also a travelogue in which the writer goes native.” Andrew Katzenstein, New York Review of Books.
Photographs, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.
Jennifer Fronc’s Monitoring the Movies: The Fight over Film Censorship in Early Twentieth-Century Urban America (University of Texas Press) “offers the first full-length study of the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures (NB) and its campaign against motion-picture censorship. Jennifer Fronc traces the NB's Progressive-era founding in New York; its evolving set of ‘standards’ for directors, producers, municipal officers, and citizens; its ‘city plan,’ which called on citizens to report screenings of condemned movies to local officials; and the spread of the NB's influence into the urban South. Ultimately, Monitoring the Movies shows how Americans grappled with the issues that arose alongside the powerful new medium of film: the extent of the right to produce and consume images and the proper scope of government control over what citizens can see and show.”
“This is an extremely important book, a major, highly readable, well-researched contribution to the scholarship on the history of movie censorship and regulation in the Progressive era. Fronc provides a rich and diverse portrait of the social matrix that informed the shape, success, and limits of the National Board of Review’s efforts to encourage better films and defeat censorship laws.” Matthew H. Bernstein, Emory University, author of Screening a Lynching: The Leo Frank Case on Film and Television.
Photographs, notes, bibliography, index.
Thomas Doherty’s Show Trial: Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist(Film and Culture Series) (Columbia University Press) “takes us behind the scenes at the first full-on media-political spectacle of the postwar era. [Doherty] details the theatrical elements of a proceeding that bridged the realms of entertainment and politics, a courtroom drama starring glamorous actors, colorful moguls, on-the-make congressmen, high-priced lawyers, single-minded investigators, and recalcitrant screenwriters, all recorded by newsreel cameras and broadcast over radio. Doherty tells the story of the Hollywood Ten and the other witnesses, friendly and unfriendly, who testified, and chronicles the implementation of the postwar blacklist. Show Trial is a rich, character-driven inquiry into how the HUAC hearings ignited the anti-Communist crackdown in Hollywood, providing a gripping cultural history of one of the most transformative events of the postwar era.”
“Doherty is one of the best, if not the best, writers in the American studies world today, and has produced an excellent book that will command a great deal of attention. Show Trial sheds new light on the story of the Hollywood Ten and HUAC and does it in fresh and exciting ways. One of the book’s greatest strengths is that it stays away from familiar academic debates that focus heavily on politics and instead tells a character-driven story using quotes from a wide variety of contemporaneous participants. Doherty places the personalities of the era―left and right―on center stage. This is easily the most comprehensive and comprehensible study of HUAC and the Hollywood Ten to date, and I predict it will become the book to read on this topic.” Steven Ross, author of Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America.
Photographs, notes, bibliography, index.
Shawn VanCour, Making Radio: Early Radio Production and the Rise of Modern Sound Culture (Oxford University Press). “The opening decades of the twentieth century witnessed a profound transformation in the history of modern sound media, with workers in U.S. film, radio, and record industries developing pioneering production methods and performance styles tailored to emerging technologies of electric sound reproduction that would redefine dominant forms and experiences of popular audio entertainment. Focusing on broadcasting's initial expansion during the 1920s, Making Radio explores the forms of creative labor pursued for the medium in the period prior to the better-known network era, assessing their role in shaping radio's identity and identifying affinities with parallel practices pursued for conversion-era film and phonography. Tracing programming forms adopted by early radio writers and programmers, production techniques developed by studio engineers, and performance styles cultivated by on-air talent, it shows how radio workers negotiated a series of broader industrial and cultural pressures to establish best practices for their medium that reshaped popular forms of music, drama, and public oratory and laid the foundation for a new era of electric sound entertainment.”
“Of all important sound media, none has been so neglected as radio - especially early radio. That's why Making Radio is so welcome. Based on rarely consulted archival materials, Shawn VanCour's study opens important new territory.” Rick Altman, Emeritus Professor of Cinema and Comparative Literature, University of Iowa.
Photographs, notes, bibliography, index.
Sam Wasson’s Improv Nation: How We Made a Great American Art (Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) “charts the meteoric rise of improv in this richly reported, scene-driven narrative that, like its subject, moves fast and digs deep. He shows us the chance meeting at a train station between Mike Nichols and Elaine May. We hang out at the after-hours bar Dan Aykroyd opened so that friends like John Belushi, Bill Murray, and Gilda Radner would always have a home. We go behind the scenes of landmark entertainments from The Graduate to Caddyshack, The Forty-Year Old Virgin to The Colbert Report. Along the way, we commune with a host of pioneers—Mike Nichols and Harold Ramis, Dustin Hoffman, Chevy Chase, Steve Carell, Amy Poehler, Alan Arkin, Tina Fey, Judd Apatow, and many more. With signature verve and nuance, Wasson shows why improv deserves to be considered the great American art form of the last half-century—and the most influential one today.”
“Improv Nation masterfully tells a new history of American comedy . . . Wasson masters the art of the monograph by locating a sharp argument within a sweeping, messy, compelling history . . . Wasson’s dizzying style drives the point home. Though he jumps around, he never gives a player short shrift, and his conversational tone captivates. The book’s focus tightens as its narrative strands converge, but it maintains a loose unpredictability throughout. It holds the element of surprise — true to the spirit of its subject. Grade: A-” Entertainment Weekly
Sam Wasson's Improv Nation examines one of the most important stories in American popular culture . . . Wasson may be the first author to explain [improv’s] entire history in comprehensive detail. For that reason alone, it’s a valuable book, benefiting from dogged reporting and the kind of sweeping arguments that get your attention.” New York Times Book Review
Photographs, notes, index.
Roger Scruton’s Music as an Art (Bloomsbury Academic) “argues [that], in earlier times, our musical culture had secure foundations in the church, the concert hall and the home; in the ceremonies and celebrations of ordinary life, religion and manners. Yet we no longer live in that world. Fewer people now play instruments and music is, for many, a form of largely solitary enjoyment. As he shows in Music as an Art, we live at a critical time for classical music, and this book is an important contribution to the debate, of which we stand in need, concerning the place of music in Western civilization. Music as an Art begins by examining music through a philosophical lens, engaging in discussions about tonality, music and the moral life, music and cognitive science and German idealism, as well as recalling the author’s struggle to encourage his students to distinguish the qualities of good music. Scruton then explains--via erudite chapters on Schubert, Britten, Rameau, opera and film--how we can develop greater judgment in music, recognizing both good taste and bad, establishing musical values, as well as musical pleasures.”
Musical notations, bibliography, index.
William Logan, Dickinson's Nerves, Frost's Woods: Poetry in the Shadow of the Past (Columbia University Press). “In Dickinson’s Nerves, Frost’s Woods, William Logan, the noted and often controversial critic of contemporary poetry, returns to some of the greatest poems in English literature. He reveals what we may not have seen before and what his critical eye can do with what he loves. In essays that pair different poems―“Ozymandias,” “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer,” “In a Station of the Metro,” “The Red Wheelbarrow,” “After great pain, a formal feeling comes,” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” among others―Logan reconciles history and poetry to provide new ways of reading poets ranging from Shakespeare and Shelley to Lowell and Heaney. In these striking essays, Logan presents the poetry of the past through the lens of the past, attempting to bring poems back to the world in which they were made. Logan’s criticism is informed by the material culture of that world, whether postal deliveries in Regency London, the Métro lighting in 1911 Paris, or the wheelbarrows used in 1923. Deeper knowledge of the poet’s daily existence lets us read old poems afresh, providing a new way of understanding poems now encrusted with commentary. Logan shows that criticism cannot just root blindly among the words of the poem but must live partly in a lost world, in the shadow of the poet’s life and the shadow of the age.”
William Logan is Alumni/ae Professor and Distinguished Teaching Scholar at the University of Florida. He is the author of The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin (2005); Our Savage Art: Poetry and the Civil Tongue( 2009); and Guilty Knowledge, Guilty Pleasure: The Dirty Art of Poetry(2012), all from Columbia University Press, as well as eleven books of poems and other works of criticism.
“Dickinson's Nerves, Frost's Woods only confirms and enriches my sense that William Logan is the most outstanding critic of poetry now practicing in America. An extraordinary critical effort.” William Pritchard, Amherst College.
Photographs, illustrations, notes, index.
Kevin Young’s Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News (Graywolf Press) “tours us through a rogue’s gallery of hoaxers, plagiarists, forgers, and fakers―from the humbug of P. T. Barnum and Edgar Allan Poe to the unrepentant bunk of JT LeRoy and Donald J. Trump. Bunk traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon, examining what motivates hucksters and makes the rest of us so gullible. Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, race being the most insidious American hoax of all. He chronicles how Barnum came to fame by displaying figures like Joice Heth, a black woman whom he pretended was the 161-year-old nursemaid to George Washington, and What Is It?, an African American man Barnum professed was a newly discovered missing link in evolution. Bunk then turns to the hoaxing of history and the ways that forgers, plagiarists, and journalistic fakers invent backstories and falsehoods to sell us lies about themselves and about the world in our own time, from pretend Native Americans Grey Owl and Nasdijj to the deadly imposture of Clark Rockefeller, from the made-up memoirs of James Frey to the identity theft of Rachel Dolezal. In this brilliant and timely work, Young asks what it means to live in a post-factual world of “truthiness” where everything is up for interpretation and everyone is subject to a pervasive cynicism that damages our ideas of reality, fact, and art.”
“[Young’s] scrupulous feel for archival traces ― for the urgent materiality of memory ― is one of the superpowers he brings to both his poems and nonfiction. The newest example is Bunk, Young’s enthralling and essential new study of our collective American love affair with pernicious and intractable moonshine. . . . Bunk is a sort of book that comes along rarely: the encompassing survey of some vast realm of human activity, encyclopedic but also unapologetically subjective. . . . Bunk, a panorama, a rumination and a polemic at once, asks more of the reader. It delivers riches in return. . . . Bunk is a reader’s feast, a shaggy, generous tome with a slim volume of devastating aphorisms lurking inside; it also shimmers with moments of brief personal testimony.” Jonathan Lethem, The New York Times Book Review
Photographs, notes, index.
Linda Freedman’s William Blake and the Myth of America: From the Abolitionists to the Counterculture (Oxford University Press) “tells the story of William Blake's literary reception in America and suggests that ideas about Blake's poetry and personality helped shape mythopoeic visions of America from the Abolitionists to the counterculture. It links high and low culture and covers poetry, music, theology, and the novel. American writers have turned to Blake to rediscover the symbolic meaning of their country in times of cataclysmic change, terror, and hope. Blake entered American society when slavery was rife and civil war threatened the fragile experiment of democracy. He found his moment in the mid twentieth-century counterculture as left-wing Americans took refuge in the arts at a time of increasingly reactionary conservatism, vicious racism, pervasive sexism, dangerous nuclear competition, and an increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam, the fires of Orc raging against the systems of Urizen. Blake's America, as a symbol of cyclical hope and despair, influenced many Americans who saw themselves as continuing the task of prophecy and vision. Blakean forms of bardic song, aphorism, prophecy, and lament became particularly relevant to a literary tradition which centralised the relationship between aspiration and experience. His interrogations of power and privilege, freedom and form resonated with Americans who repeatedly wrestled with the deep ironies of new world symbolism and sought to renew a Whitmanesque ideal of democracy through affection and openness towards alterity.”
“Linda Freedman is a Lecturer in English and American literature at University College London. She is the author of Emily Dickinson and the Religious Imagination (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and has published widely on nineteenth and twentieth century literature. Her work explores the relationship between literature, theology, and the visual arts; transatlantic connections; and the afterlife of Romanticism.”
Illustrations, bibliography, index.
Joanne B. Freeman’sThe Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) “recovers the long-lost story of physical violence on the floor of the U.S. Congress. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, she shows that the Capitol was rife with conflict in the decades before the Civil War. Legislative sessions were often punctuated by mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slugfests. When debate broke down, congressmen drew pistols and waved Bowie knives. One representative even killed another in a duel. Many were beaten and bullied in an attempt to intimidate them into compliance, particularly on the issue of slavery. These fights didn’t happen in a vacuum. Freeman’s dramatic accounts of brawls and thrashings tell a larger story of how fisticuffs and journalism, and the powerful emotions they elicited, raised tensions between North and South and led toward war. In the process, she brings the antebellum Congress to life, revealing its rough realities―the feel, sense, and sound of it―as well as its nation-shaping import. Funny, tragic, and rivetingly told, The Field of Blood offers a front-row view of congressional mayhem and sheds new light on the careers of John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and other luminaries, as well as introducing a host of lesser-known but no less fascinating men. The result is a fresh understanding of the workings of American democracy and the bonds of Union on the eve of their greatest peril.”
"Given the enormous literature on the Civil War era, it’s difficult for a historian to say something genuinely new, but Freeman has managed to do just that . . . Freeman is a meticulous researcher and a vivid writer, and The Field of Blood makes for entertaining reading.” Eric Foner, The London Review of Books
“An impressive feat of research . . . Freeman's story [. . .] has elements of both horror and slapstick . . . The Field of Blood [. . . ] feels current. The political discourse it documents, if not the level of political violence, is alarmingly familiar in our own time.” Andrew Delbanco, The Nation
Photographs, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.
Sean Wilentz’s No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation’s Founding(The Nathan I. Huggins Lectures) (Harvard University Press) “invites fresh debate about the political and legal struggles over slavery that began during the Revolution and concluded with the Confederacy’s defeat. It drives straight to the heart of the most contentious and enduring issue in all of American history. Americans revere the Constitution even as they argue fiercely over its original toleration of slavery. Some historians have charged that slaveholders actually enshrined human bondage at the nation’s founding. The acclaimed political historian Sean Wilentz shares the dismay but sees the Constitution and slavery differently. Although the proslavery side won important concessions, he asserts, antislavery impulses also influenced the framers’ work. Far from covering up a crime against humanity, the Constitution restricted slavery’s legitimacy under the new national government. In time, that limitation would open the way for the creation of an antislavery politics that led to Southern secession, the Civil War, and Emancipation. Wilentz’s controversial and timely reconsideration upends orthodox views of the Constitution. He describes the document as a tortured paradox that abided slavery without legitimizing it. This paradox lay behind the great political battles that fractured the nation over the next seventy years. As Southern Fire-eaters invented a proslavery version of the Constitution, antislavery advocates, including Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, proclaimed antislavery versions based on the framers’ refusal to validate what they called ‘property in man’.”
Sean Wilentz is George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton University. He is the author of numerous books on American history and politics, including The Rise of American Democracy, which won the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and The Politicians and the Egalitarians, chosen as Best History Book of the Year by Kirkus and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Wilentz’s writings on American music have earned him two Grammy nominations and two Deems-Taylor-ASCAP awards.
“What does Wilentz know that others have gotten so terribly wrong about the founding connection between slavery and racism? In his revealing and passionately argued book, he insists that because the framers did not sanction slavery as a matter of principle, the antislavery legacy of the Constitution has been ‘slighted' and ‘misconstrued' for over 200 years.” Khalil Gibran Muhammad, New York Times
“Demonstrating that the Constitution both protected slavery and left open the possibility of an antislavery politics, Wilentz’s careful and insightful analysis helps us understand how Americans who hated slavery, such as Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, could come to see the Constitution as an ally in their struggle.” Eric Foner, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.
Notes, index.
Hillary Chute’s Why Comics?: From Underground to Everywhere (Harper Collins) “reveals the history of comics, underground comics (or comix), and graphic novels, through deep thematic analysis, and fascinating portraits of the fearless men and women behind them. As Scott McCloud revealed the methods behind comics and the way they worked in his classic Understanding Comics, Chute will reveal the themes that Comics handle best, and how the form is uniquely equipped to explore them.”
“In her wonderful book, Hillary L. Chute suggests that we’re in a blooming, expanding era of the art . . . . Chute’s often lovely, sensitive discussions of individual expression in independent comics seem so right and true.” New York Times Book Review
Illustrations, bibliography, index.
John B. Boles’ Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty (Basic Books) “plumbs every facet of Thomas Jefferson’s life, all while situating him amid the sweeping upheaval of his times. We meet Jefferson the politician and political thinker--as well as Jefferson the architect, scientist, bibliophile, paleontologist, musician, and gourmet. We witness him drafting of the Declaration of Independence, negotiating the Louisiana Purchase, and inventing a politics that emphasized the states over the federal government--a political philosophy that shapes our national life to this day. Boles offers new insight into Jefferson's actions and thinking on race. His Jefferson is not a hypocrite, but a tragic figure--a man who could not hold simultaneously to his views on abolition, democracy, and patriarchal responsibility. Yet despite his flaws, Jefferson's ideas would outlive him and make him into nothing less than the architect of American liberty.”
“Magisterial . . . perhaps the finest one-volume biography of an American president.” Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post
Photographs, notes, index.
Catherine Kerrison, Jefferson's Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America (Ballantine Books/Random House). “The remarkable untold story of Thomas Jefferson’s three daughters—two white and free, one black and enslaved—and the divergent paths they forged in a newly independent America. Thomas Jefferson had three daughters: Martha and Maria by his wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson, and Harriet by his slave Sally Hemings. In Jefferson’s Daughters, Catherine Kerrison, a scholar of early American and women’s history, recounts the remarkable journey of these three women—and how their struggle to define themselves reflects both the possibilities and the limitations that resulted from the American Revolution.
Although the three women shared a father, the similarities end there. Martha and Maria received a fine convent school education while they lived with their father during his diplomatic posting in Paris—a hothouse of intellectual ferment whose celebrated salonnières are vividly brought to life in Kerrison’s narrative. Once they returned home, however, the sisters found their options limited by the laws and customs of early America. Harriet Hemings followed a different path. She escaped slavery—apparently with the assistance of Jefferson himself. Leaving Monticello behind, she boarded a coach and set off for a decidedly uncertain future. For this groundbreaking triple biography, Kerrison has uncovered never-before-published documents written by the Jefferson sisters when they were in their teens, as well as letters written by members of the Jefferson and Hemings families. She has interviewed Hemings family descendants (and, with their cooperation, initiated DNA testing) and searched for descendants of Harriet Hemings. The eventful lives of Thomas Jefferson’s daughters provide a unique vantage point from which to examine the complicated patrimony of the American Revolution itself. The richly interwoven story of these three strong women and their fight to shape their own destinies sheds new light on the ongoing movement toward human rights in America—and on the personal and political legacy of one of our most controversial Founding Fathers.”
Catherine Kerrison is an associate professor of history at Villanova University, where she teaches courses in Colonial and Revolutionary America and women’s and gender history. She holds a PhD in American history from the College of William and Mary. Her first book, Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South, won the Outstanding Book Award from the History of Education Society. She lives in Berwyn, Pennsylvania.
“Beautifully written . . . .To a nuanced study of Jefferson’s two white daughters, Martha and Maria, [Kerrison] innovatively adds a discussion of his only enslaved daughter, Harriet Hemings.” The New York Times Book Review
Photographs, illustrations, map, notes, bibliography, index.
The Oxford Companion to the Brontës: Anniversary Edition (Oxford University Press), by Christine Alexander and Margaret Smith, Editors. “This special edition of The Oxford Companion to the Brontes commemorates the bicentenary of Emily Bronte's birth in July 1818 and provides comprehensive and detailed information about the lives, works, and reputations of the Brontes - the three sisters Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, their father, and their brother Branwell.
Christine Alexanderis Emeritus Scientia Professor of English at the University of New South Wales. Her books include the multi-volume Edition of the Early Writings of Charlotte Bronte, Love and Friendship and Other Youthful Writings, and the British Academy prize-winning book The Early Writings of Charlotte Bronte. She has also published widely on gothic literature, Jane Austen, critical editing, literary juvenilia, and landscape gardening, and has co-edited The Child Writer from Austen to Woolf.
Margaret Smithwas formerly Honorary Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research in Arts and Social Science, University of Birmingham, and a Vice-President of the Bronte Society. She has edited many of the Brontes' works, including The Professor, Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and The Letters of Charlotte Bronte.
“This is a must . . . . A treasure trove of a book.” Irish Times.
illustrations, maps, biographies of contributors, classified contents list, bibliography, chronology, list of abbreviations.
Manuel Pastor’s State of Resistance : What California’s Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Mean for America’s Future (The New Press) is “A leading sociologist’s brilliant and revelatory argument that the future of politics, work, immigration, and more may be found in California. Once upon a time, any mention of California triggered unpleasant reminders of Ronald Reagan and right-wing tax revolts, ballot propositions targeting undocumented immigrants, and racist policing that sparked two of the nation’s most devastating riots. In fact, California confronted many of the challenges the rest of the country faces now—decades before the rest of us.”
“In his book, which is concise, clear and convincing, [Manuel Pastor] contends that the redemptive arc of modern California’s history offers both cautionary and constructive guidance on a vision for the country as a whole. Pastor sets out his story in three acts—rise, fall, and recovery—each of which offers surprising insights for readers outside the state (and many inside as well). ‘America now looks like California at its lowest point,’ Pastor says. He offers a guide to a possible path back up.” James Fallows, The New York Times Book Review
Charts, notes, index.
Miriam Pawel’sThe Browns of California: The Family Dynasty that Transformed a State and Shaped a Nation (Bloomsbury Publishing) “weaves a narrative history that spans four generations, from August Schuckman, the Prussian immigrant who crossed the Plains in 1852 and settled on a northern California ranch, to his great-grandson Jerry Brown, who reclaimed the family homestead one hundred forty years later. Through the prism of their lives, we gain an essential understanding of California and an appreciation of its importance. The magisterial story is enhanced by dozens of striking photos, many published for the first time. This book gives new insights to those steeped in California history, offers a corrective for those who confuse stereotypes and legend for fact, and opens new vistas for readers familiar with only the sketchiest outlines of a place habitually viewed from afar with a mix of envy and awe, disdain, and fascination.”
“Miriam Pawel has written a remarkable book--a generational biography of a political dynasty, ranging from the California Gold Rush to the presidency of Donald Trump. She recounts the pivotal governorship of Pat Brown and the even more significant career of his son Jerry with assured prose and a keen sense of historical context. This is the engrossing saga of complicated family at the center of American political life for the last sixty years.” T.J. Stiles, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Custer’s Trials and The First Tycoon.
Photographs, notes, bibliography, index.
Bettany Hughes,Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities (Da Capo Press). “From the Koran to Shakespeare, this city with three names--Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul--resonates as an idea and a place, real and imagined. Standing as the gateway between East and West, North and South, it has been the capital city of the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman Empires. For much of its history it was the very center of the world, known simply as "The City," but, as Bettany Hughes reveals, Istanbul is not just a city, but a global story. In this epic new biography, Hughes takes us on a dazzling historical journey from the Neolithic to the present, through the many incarnations of one of the world's greatest cities--exploring the ways that Istanbul's influence has spun out to shape the wider world. Hughes investigates what it takes to make a city and tells the story not just of emperors, viziers, caliphs, and sultans, but of the poor and the voiceless, of the women and men whose aspirations and dreams have continuously reinvented Istanbul. Written with energy and animation, award-winning historian Bettany Hughes deftly guides readers through Istanbul's rich layers of history. Based on meticulous research and new archaeological evidence, this captivating portrait of the momentous life of Istanbul is visceral, immediate, and authoritative--narrative history at its finest.”
“Brimming with brio and incident. . . life-filled and life-affirming history, steeped in romance and written with verve.” Justin Marozzi, award-winning author of Baghdad.
“Mesmerizing. . . . Weaves research and insight with understanding and love: here is a book written as much with the heart as the mind.” Elif Shafak, award-winning author of The Bastard of Istanbul.
Illustrations, notes, bibliography, timeline, index.
Robert Gottlieb’s Near-Death Experiences . . . and Others (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) “features twenty or so pieces he’s written mostly for the New York Review of Books, ranging from reconsiderations of American writers such as Dorothy Parker, Thornton Wilder, Thomas Wolfe (“genius”), and James Jones, to Leonard Bernstein, Lorenz Hart, Lady Diana Cooper (“the most beautiful girl in the world”), the actor-assassin John Wilkes Booth, the scandalous movie star Mary Astor, and not-yet president Donald Trump. The writings compiled here are as various as they are provocative: an extended probe into the world of post-death experiences; a sharp look at the biopics of transcendent figures such as Shakespeare, Molière, and Austen; a soap opera-ish movie account of an alleged affair between Chanel and Stravinsky; and a copious sampling of the dance reviews he’s been writing for The New York Observer for close to twenty years. A worthy successor to his expansive 2011 collection, Lives and Letters, and his admired 2016 memoir, Avid Reader, Near-Death Experiences displays the same insight and intellectual curiosity that have made Gottlieb, in the words of The New York Times’ Dwight Garner, “the most acclaimed editor of the second half of the twentieth century.”
Robert Gottlieb has been the editor in chief of Simon and Schuster; the president, publisher, and editor in chief of Alfred A. Knopf; and the editor of The New Yorker. As a writer, he contributes frequently to The New York Review of Books and is the author of Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens, George Balanchine: The Ballet Maker, Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt, and Avid Reader: A Life. In 2015, Gottlieb was presented the Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Peggy Ornstein, Don't Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life (Harper Paperbacks). “Named one of the ‘40 women who changed the media business in the last 40 years’ by the Columbia Journalism Review, Peggy Orenstein is one of the most prominent, unflinching feminist voices of our time. Her writing has broken ground and broken silence on topics as wide-ranging as miscarriage, motherhood, breast cancer, princess culture, and the importance of girls’ sexual pleasure. Her unique blend of investigative reporting, personal revelation, and unexpected humor has made her books bestselling classics.
In Don’t Call Me Princess, Orenstein’s most resonant and important essays are available for the first time in collected form, updated with both an original introduction and personal reflections on each piece. Her takes on reproductive justice, the infertility industry, tensions between working and stay-at-home moms, pink ribbon fear mongering, and the complications of girl culture are not merely timeless—they have, like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, become more urgent in our contemporary political climate. Don’t Call Me Princess offers a crucial evaluation of where we stand today as women—in our work lives, sex lives, as mothers, as partners—illuminating both how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go.”
“Known for her wide-ranging feminist writing about everything from princess culture to breast cancer, Orenstein presents a collection of her essays that are both striking and timely.” New York Times Book Review.
Joanne Lipman,That's What She Said: What Men Need to Know (and Women Need to Tell Them) About Working Together(William Morrow). “First things first: There will be no man shaming in That’s What She Said. A recent Harvard study found that corporate ‘diversity training’ has actually made the gender gap worse—in part because it makes men feel demonized. Women, meanwhile, have been told closing the gender gap is up to them: they need to speak up, to be more confident, to demand to be paid what they’re worth. They discuss these issues amongst themselves all the time. What they don’t do is talk to men about it. It’s time to end that disconnect. More people in leadership roles are genuinely trying to transform the way we work together, because there's abundant evidence that companies with more women in senior leadership perform better by virtually every measure. Yet despite good intentions, men often lack the tools they need, leading to fumbles, missteps, frustration and misunderstanding that continue to inflict real and lasting damage on women's careers. That's What She Said solves for that dilemma. Filled with illuminating anecdotes, data from the most recent studies, and stories from Joanne Lipman’s own journey to the top of a male-dominated industry, it shows how we can win by reaching across the gender divide. What can the Enron scandal teach us about the way men and women communicate professionally? How does brain chemistry help explain men’s fear of women’s emotions at work? Why did Kimberly Clark have an all-male team of executives in charge of their Kotex tampon line? What can we learn from Iceland’s campaign to ‘feminize’ an entire nation? That’s What She Said shows why empowering women as true equals is an essential goal for women and men—and offers a roadmap for getting there.
That’s What She Said solves for:
· The respect gap
· Unconscious bias
· Interruptions
· The pay and promotion gap
· Being heard
· The motherhood penalty
· ‘Bropropriation’ and ‘mansplaining’.
· And more . . . .”
“It’s great we are talking the talk but Joanne Lipman’s cutting edge research and razor sharp advice will help men and women alike start walking the walk (toward a more equitable workplace).” Katie Couric
“At last! That’s What She Said is so timely—and so needed. It’s the ultimate guide for women (and men) who are determined to close the gender gap. Lively and readable, it’s a game-changer in how we understand gender relations - and how we can break down barriers, right now.” Sallie Krawcheck, CEO, Ellevest
Cass R. Sunstein’s Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America (Dey Street Books/Harper Collins) “explore[s] the lessons of history, how democracies crumble, how propaganda works, and the role of the media, courts, elections, and "fake news" in the modern political landscape—and what the future of the United States may hold.”
“[Trump] is a cult leader of a movement that has taken over a political party – and he specifically campaigned on a platform of one-man rule. This fact permeates Can It Happen Here?. . . which concludes, if you read between the lines, that “it” already has.” Andrew Sullivan, New York Times Book Review
Notes, index.
Allan J. Lichtman’s The Embattled Vote in America: From the Founding to the Present (Harvard University Press) “gives us the deep history behind today’s headlines and shows that calls of voter fraud, political gerrymandering and outrageous attempts at voter suppression are nothing new. The players and the tactics have changed―we don’t outright ban people from voting anymore―but the battle and the stakes remain just as high.”
“Lichtman’s important book emphasizes the founders’ great blunder: They failed to enshrine a right to vote in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights . . . . The Embattled Vote in America traces the consequences through American history…[Lichtman] uses history to contextualize the fix we’re in today…Growing outrage, he thinks, could ignite demands for change. With luck, this fine history might just help to fan the flame.” James A. Morone, New York Times Book Review.
“The great value of Lichtman’s book is the way it puts today’s right-wing voter suppression efforts in their historical setting. He identifies the current push as the third crackdown on African-American voting rights in our history.” Michael Tomasky, New York Review of Books.
Notes, index.
Zephyr Teachout, Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United (Harvard University Press). “When Louis XVI presented Benjamin Franklin with a snuff box encrusted with diamonds and inset with the King’s portrait, the gift troubled Americans: it threatened to ‘corrupt’ Franklin by clouding his judgment or altering his attitude toward the French in subtle psychological ways. This broad understanding of political corruption―rooted in ideals of civic virtue―was a driving force at the Constitutional Convention. For two centuries the framers’ ideas about corruption flourished in the courts, even in the absence of clear rules governing voters, civil officers, and elected officials. Should a law that was passed by a state legislature be overturned because half of its members were bribed? What kinds of lobbying activity were corrupt, and what kinds were legal? When does an implicit promise count as bribery? In the 1970s the U.S. Supreme Court began to narrow the definition of corruption, and the meaning has since changed dramatically. No case makes that clearer than Citizens United. In 2010, one of the most consequential Court decisions in American political history gave wealthy corporations the right to spend unlimited money to influence elections. Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion treated corruption as nothing more than explicit bribery, a narrow conception later echoed by Chief Justice Roberts in deciding McCutcheon v. FEC in 2014. With unlimited spending transforming American politics for the worse, warns Zephyr Teachout, Citizens United and McCutcheon were not just bad law but bad history. If the American experiment in self-government is to have a future, then we must revive the traditional meaning of corruption and embrace an old ideal.”
“At last someone has written a book that puts a name to what is perhaps the most significant factor shaping American politics today: corruption. In a masterly work of scholarship, Zephyr Teachout. . . . traces the history of American approaches to what was long considered a mortal threat to the republic. She demonstrates that recent jurisprudence, which has whittled down the definition of corruption to encompass only a contractual exchange between briber and public official, represents nothing less than ‘a revolution in political theory. . . . Teachout calls for a return to the Framers’ preference for across-the-board rules to help prevent corrupt acts before they are perpetrated, rather than relying on punishment after the fact.” Sarah Chayes, Wall Street Journal
“In Corruption in America, an eloquent, revealing, and sometimes surprising historical inquiry, Teachout convincingly argues that corruption, broadly understood as placing private interests over the public good in public office, is at the root of what ails American democracy.” David Cole, New York Review of Books
Notes, bibliography, index.
3) MISCELLANEOUS
Michael Mann’s and Tom Toles’The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy (Columbia University Press) “portrays the intellectual pretzels into which denialists must twist logic to explain away the clear evidence that human activity has changed Earth's climate. Toles' cartoons collapse counter-scientific strategies into their biased components, helping readers see how to best strike at these fallacies. Mann's expert skills at science communication aim to restore sanity to a debate that continues to rage against widely acknowledged scientific consensus. The synergy of these two climate science crusaders enlivens the gloom and doom of so many climate-themed books―and may even convert die-hard doubters to the side of sound science.”
“Concise and fiercely illustrated . . . . [Toles’] cartoons cut to the core of the issues that Mann untangles in the prose.”
Mark Fischetti, Scientific American
Illustrations, notes, index.
Ken Krimstein’sThe Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt: A Tyranny of Truth (Bloomsbury Publishing) is “For Persepolis and Logicomix fans, a New Yorker cartoonist's page-turning graphic biography of the fascinating Hannah Arendt, the most prominent philosopher of the twentieth century. One of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century and a hero of political thought, the largely unsung and often misunderstood Hannah Arendt is best known for her landmark 1951 book on openness in political life, The Origins of Totalitarianism, which, with its powerful and timely lessons for today, has become newly relevant. She led an extraordinary life. This was a woman who endured Nazi persecution firsthand, survived harrowing "escapes" from country to country in Europe, and befriended such luminaries as Walter Benjamin and Mary McCarthy, in a world inhabited by everyone from Marc Chagall and Marlene Dietrich to Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. A woman who finally had to give up her unique genius for philosophy, and her love of a very compromised man--the philosopher and Nazi-sympathizer Martin Heidegger--for what she called "love of the world. Compassionate and enlightening, playful and page-turning, New Yorker cartoonist Ken Krimstein's The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt is a strikingly illustrated portrait of a complex, controversial, deeply flawed, and irrefutably courageous woman whose intelligence and "virulent truth telling" led her to breathtaking insights into the human condition, and whose experience continues to shine a light on how to live as an individual and a public citizen in troubled times.”
“Ken Krimstein's deeply moving graphic memoir about the life and thoughts of philosopher Hannah Arendt is not only about Hannah Arendt. It's also, through her words, about how to live in the world, the meaning of freedom, the perils of totalitarianism, and our power as human beings to think about things and not just act blindly. Krimstein explains Arendt's ideas with clarity, wit, and enormous erudition, and they still resonate.” Roz Chast
Albert Murray: Collected Novels & Poems: Train Whistle Guitar, The Spyglass Tree, The Seven League Boots, The Magic Keys, Poems (Library of America), Henry Louis Gates Jr., editor. “One of the leading cultural critics of his generation, Albert Murray was also the author of an extraordinary quartet of semi-autobiographical novels, vivid impressionistic portraits of black life in the Deep South in the 1920s and ’30s and in prewar New York City. Train Whistle Guitar (1974) introduces Murray's recurring narrator and protagonist, Scooter, a ‘Southern jackrabbit raised in a briarpatch’ too nimble ever to receive a scratch. Scooter's education in books, music, and the blue-steel bent-note blues-ballad realities of American life continues in The Spyglass Tree (1991), Murray's ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Tuskegee Undergraduate.’ The Seven League Boots (1996) follows Scooter as he becomes a bass player in a touring band not unlike Duke Ellington's, and The Magic Keys (2005), in which Scooter at last finds his true vocation as a writer in Greenwich Village, is an elegiac reverie on an artist's life. Editors Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Paul Devlin round out the volume with a selection of Murray's remarkable poems, including 11 unpublished pieces from his notebooks, and two rare examples of his work as a short story writer.”
“An absolute joy to read.” Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Chronology, notes, index.
Karida L. Brown’s Gone Home: Race and Roots through Appalachia(University of North Carolina Press) “offers a much-needed corrective to the current whitewashing of Appalachia. In telling the stories of African Americans living and working in Appalachian coal towns, Brown offers a sweeping look at race, identity, changes in politics and policy, and black migration in the region and beyond. Drawn from over 150 original oral history interviews with former and current residents of Harlan County, Kentucky, Brown shows that as the nation experienced enormous transformation from the pre- to the post-civil rights era, so too did black Americans. In reconstructing the life histories of black coal miners, Brown shows the mutable and shifting nature of collective identity, the struggles of labor and representation, and that Appalachia is far more diverse than you think.”
“In this wondrous and careful work of essential and classic southern sociology, Karida Leigh Brown brilliantly illuminates black subjectivities as lived, realized, and constituted in the overlooked ancestral African American homeland of Appalachian coal country. Traversing time and space, race and region, Gone Home tells about the South in ways heretofore unimaginable.” Zandria Robinson, author of This Ain't Chicago
Photographs, tables, notes, bibliography, timeline, index.
Elena Ferrante’s Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey (Europa Editions), translated by >Ann Goldstein>, is just the kind of collection that I love. Frantumaglia—a jumble of fragments—it is, “Consisting of over 20 years of letters, essays, reflections, and interviews . . . a unique depiction of an author who embodies a consummate passion for writing. . . . [It] invites readers into Elena Ferrante’s workshop. It offers a glimpse into the drawers of her writing desk, those drawers from which emerged her three early stand-alone novels and the four installments of My Brilliant Friend, known in English as The Neapolitan Quartet. . . . In these pages Ferrante answers many of her readers’ questions. She addresses her choice to stand aside and let her books live autonomous lives. She discusses her thoughts and concerns as her novels are being adapted into films. She talks about the challenge of finding concise answers to interview questions. She explains the joys and the struggles of writing, the anguish of composing a story only to discover that that story isn’t good enough. She contemplates her relationship with psychoanalysis, with the cities she has lived in, with motherhood, with feminism, and with her childhood as a storehouse for memories, impressions, and fantasies. The result is a vibrant and intimate self-portrait of a writer at work.
Russ Kick,The Graphic Canon of Crime and Mystery, Vol. 1: From Sherlock Holmes to A Clockwork Orange to Jo Nesbø. (Seven Stories Press). “From James M. Cain to Stephen King, from Sophocles to the Marquis de Sade to Iceberg Slim, here are stunning and sometimes macabre visualizations of some of the greatest crime and mystery stories of all time. Rick Geary brings his crisp style to Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment; C. Frakes resurrects the forgotten novella Talma Gordon," the first mystery written by an African American. Crime finds new life in these graphic renditions of The Arabian Nights, the Bible, James Joyce's Dubliners, Patricia Highsmith, and leading mystery writers of today like Jo Nesbø. Crime and mystery have never been so brilliantly reimagined.
Russ Kick is the originator of the Graphic Canon series [i.e., The Graphic Canon, Volume 1: From the Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous Liaisons, The Graphic Canon, Volume 2: From “Kubla Khan” to the Bronte Sisters to The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Graphic Canon, Vol. 3: From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest(all by Seven Stories Press)], for which he has commissioned new work from over 350 artists and illustrators. NPR described it as ‘easily the most ambitious and successfully realized literary project in recent memory.’ Kick's previous anthologies, You Are Being Lied To and Everything You Know Is Wrong, informed a whole generation of Americans with the hard truths of American politics and created a media frenzy for being the first to publish suppressed photographs of American flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq. The New York Times dubbed Kick ‘an information archaeologist,’ Details magazine described him as ‘a Renaissance man,’ and Utne Reader named him one of its ‘50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World.’ His popular website, thememoryhole2.org, is active again and getting national media coverage for archiving documents that the Trump administration has been deleting.”
Nicole Claveloux’sThe Green Hand and Other Stories (New York Review Comics),translated by Donald Nicholson Smithand with an introduction by Daniel Clowes, “presents the full achievement of an unforgettable, unjustly neglected master of French comics. . . . Nicole Claveloux’s short stories—originally published in the late 1970s and never before collected in English—are among the most beautiful comics ever drawn: whimsical, intoxicating, with the freshness and splendor of dreams. In hallucinatory color or elegant black-and-white, she brings us into lands that are strange but oddly recognizable, filled with murderous grandmothers and lonely city dwellers, bad-tempered vegetables and walls that are surprisingly easy to fall through. In the title story, written with Edith Zha, a new houseplant becomes the first step in an epic journey of self-discovery and a witty fable of modern romance—complete with talking shrubbery, a wised-up genie, and one very depressed bird.”
Nicole Claveloux contributed to the French comics magazines Métal Hurlant (Heavy Metal)and Ah! Nanaand drew a popular comic strip called Grabote. Championed by book publisher Harlin Quist, she has also illustrated a number of successful children’s books, including an award-winning version of Alice in Wonderland. She lives in France.
“Nicole Claveloux’s comics come across as odd, mind-bending ‘What If’s’. . . . The work, certainly, has that air of being created at an inspired moment, with ‘The Green Hand’ in particular presenting as a little-recognized masterpiece.” The Comics Journal
“Illustrated with never-before-seen photographs, cartoons, and drawings,” Cullen Murphy’s Cartoon County: My Father and His Friends in the Golden Age of Make-Believe (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) “brings the postwar American era alive, told through the relationship of a son to his father, an extraordinarily talented and generous man who had been trained by Norman Rockwell. Cartoon County gives us a glimpse into a very special community―and of an America that used to be. For a period of about fifty years, right in the middle of the American Century, many of the nation’s top comic-strip cartoonists, gag cartoonists, and magazine illustrators lived within a stone’s throw of one another in the southwestern corner of Connecticut―a bit of bohemia in the middle of those men in their gray flannel suits. Cullen Murphy’s father, John Cullen Murphy, drew the wildly popular comic strips Prince Valiant and Big Ben Bolt, and was at the heart of this artistic milieu. Comic strips and gag cartoons read by hundreds of millions were created in this tight-knit group―Superman, Beetle Bailey, Snuffy Smith, Rip Kirby, Hagar the Horrible, Hi and Lois, Nancy, Sam & Silo, Amy, The Wizard of Id, The Heart of Juliet Jones, Family Circus, Joe Palooka, and The Lockhorns, among others. Cartoonists and their art were a pop-cultural force in a way that few today remember. Anarchic and deeply creative, the cartoonists were independent spirits whose artistic talents had mainly been forged during service in World War II.”
"Warm and graceful . . . [a] stylishly written and illustrated field guide to the American Cartoonist and his mid-century habitat.” Garry Trudeau, The New York Times Book Review
“A lovingly observed tribute to that magical mid-twentieth-century never-never land (suburban Connecticut), where cartoonists of newspaper strips and magazine gag panels commuted to the top floor or the basement of their homes, or to nearby studios, to turn out a form of art that was, in its day, an integral part of American culture, rivaling today’s TV, cable, or the web. John Cullen Murphy was the illustrator of the classic Prince Valiant Sunday page, and his life, and that of his cartoonist friends, is recorded in anthropological detail in this beautifully composed and delightfully illustrated love letter from his son.” Jules Feiffer, cartoonist and illustrator, author of the noir graphic novel trilogy Kill My Mother.
Notes, index.
Reed Tucker’s Slugfest: Inside the Epic, 50-year Battle between Marvel and DC (Da Capo Press) is “the first book to chronicle the history of this epic rivalry into a single, in-depth narrative. . . . [It] is the story of the greatest corporate rivalry never told. Complete with interviews with the major names in the industry, Slugfest reveals the arsenal of schemes the two companies have employed in their attempts to outmaneuver the competition, whether it be stealing ideas, poaching employees, planting spies, or launching price wars. The feud has never completely disappeared, and it simmers on a low boil to this day. With DC and Marvel characters becoming global icons worth billions, if anything, the stakes are higher now than ever before.”
“Reed Tucker masterfully dissects the REAL issue dividing us as a nation.” Seth Meyers, host of NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers.
Notes, index.
Joan Murray,Drafts, Fragments, and Poems: The Complete Poetry (New York Review Books Poets), Farnoosh Fathi, editor, Preface by John Ashbery.
“Though John Ashbery hailed Joan Murray as a key influence on his work, Murray’s sole collection, Poems, published after her death at the early age of twenty-four and selected by W. H. Auden for inclusion in the Yale Series of Younger Poets, has been almost entirely unavailable for the better part of half a century. Poems was put together by Grant Code, a close friend of Murray’s mother, and when Murray’s papers, long thought to be lost, reappeared in 2013, it became clear that Code had exercised a heavy editorial hand. This new collection, edited by Farnoosh Fathi from Murray’s original manuscripts, restores Murray’s raw lyricism and visionary lines, while also including a good deal of previously unpublished work, as well as a selection of her exuberant letters.”
“In a letter to novelist Helen Anderson, a resolute Joan Murray wrote, 'I would rather be mad and bad, erratic and incomprehensible, than vulnerably acquiescent to the drab.' Note how the adjectives in her sentence point to the era’s stereotypes about women’s writing. Luckily for us, every single line in this darkly luminous book proves them to be unwarranted. Murray's poems, wise beyond her years, startle the mind in their brave embrace of dissonance.” Mónica de la Torre
“Murray’s book seems to me a startling achievement for a poet who died at an even younger age than Keats, a month short of her twenty-fifth birthday. . . . The improbable poetic adventures her Poems offers have slipped into oblivion, like Eurydice, almost without a ripple.” Mark Ford, Poetry
“Up from the archives come poems that will make you feel you’re just learning to read: if vibration is your vocabulary, if unbelonging is your kind of charisma, if you have ever wanted to be a 'minnow-silver rain' or to fuck an ocean, if you’re prepared for an empathy so direct that you’d be right to call it otherworldly, Joan Murray is your poet.” Christine Hume
Included in my 2014 roundup, Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press) deserves another listing. I found the subject matter, expressed in poetic prose, and the selection of photographs deeply moving. So, evidently, did Publishers Weekly: “Accounts of racially charged interactions, insidious and flagrant, transpiring in private and in the public eye, distill the immediate emotional intensity of individual experience with tremendous precision while allowing ambiguity, ambivalence, contradiction, and exhaustion to remain in all their fraught complexity. . . . Once again Rankine inspires sympathy and outrage, but most of all a will to take a deep look at ourselves and our society.”
Photographs, illustrations, bibliography.
Graywolf Press has also sent me a batch of new volumes of poetry, namely, the following five entries:
U. S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, in her new collection Wade in the Water (Graywolf Press) “boldly ties America’s contemporary moment both to our nation’s fraught founding history and to a sense of the spirit, the everlasting. These are poems of sliding scale: some capture a flicker of song or memory; some collage an array of documents and voices; and some push past the known world into the haunted, the holy. Smith’s signature voice―inquisitive, lyrical, and wry―turns over what it means to be a citizen, a mother, and an artist in a culture arbitrated by wealth, men, and violence. Here, private utterance becomes part of a larger choral arrangement as the collection widens to include erasures of The Declaration of Independence and the correspondence between slave owners, a found poem comprised of evidence of corporate pollution and accounts of near-death experiences, a sequence of letters written by African Americans enlisted in the Civil War, and the survivors’ reports of recent immigrants and refugees. Wade in the Water is a potent and luminous book by one of America’s essential poets.”
American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time (Graywolf Press), Tracy K. Smith (Poet Laureate of the United States), editor, “presents fifty contemporary poems that explore and celebrate our country and our lives. Poet Laureate of the United States and Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy K. Smith has gathered a remarkable chorus of voices that ring up and down the registers of American poetry. In the elegant arrangement of this anthology, we hear stories from rural communities and urban centers, laments of loss in war and in grief, experiences of immigrants, outcries at injustices, and poems that honor elders, evoke history, and praise our efforts to see and understand one another. Taking its title from a poem by Robert Hayden, American Journal, the first African American appointed as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress investigates our time with curiosity, wonder, and compassion. Among the fifty poets included are: Jericho Brown, Natalie Diaz, Matthew Dickman, Mark Doty, Ross Gay, Aracelis Girmay, Joy Harjo, Terrance Hayes, Cathy Park Hong, Marie Howe, Major Jackson, Ilya Kaminsky, Robin Coste Lewis, Ada Límon, Layli Long Soldier, Erika L. Sánchez, Solmaz Sharif, Danez Smith, Susan Stewart, Mary Szybist, Natasha Trethewey, Brian Turner, Charles Wright, and Kevin Young.”
Jeffrey Yang, Hey, Marfa: Poems (Graywolf Press). “Situated in the outreaches of southwest Texas, the town of Marfa has long been an oasis for artists, immigrants looking for work, and ranchers, while the ghosts of the indigenous and the borders between languages and nations are apparent everywhere. The poet and translator Jeffrey Yang experienced the vastness of desert, township, sky, and time itself as a profound clash of dislocation and familiarity. What does it mean to survive in a physical and metaphorical desert? How does a habitat long associated with wilderness and death become a center for nourishment and art? Out of those experiences and questions, Yang has fashioned a fascinating, multifaceted work―an anti-travel guide, an anti-Western, a book of last words―that is a lyrical, anthropological investigation into history, culture, and extremity of place. Paintings and drawings of Marfa’s landscapes and substations by the artist Rackstraw Downes intertwine with Yang’s texts as mutual nodes and lines of energy. Hey, Marfa is a desert diary scaled to music that aspires to emit particles of light.”
Jenny Xie (Winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets)’s Eye Level: Poems (Graywolf Press) “award-winning debut, Eye Level, takes us far and near, to Phnom Penh, Corfu, Hanoi, New York, and elsewhere, as we travel closer and closer to the acutely felt solitude that centers this searching, moving collection. Animated by a restless inner questioning, these poems meditate on the forces that moor the self and set it in motion, from immigration to travel to estranging losses and departures. The sensual worlds here―colors, smells, tastes, and changing landscapes―bring to life questions about the self as seer and the self as seen. As Xie writes, “Me? I’m just here in my traveler’s clothes, trying on each passing town for size.” Her taut, elusive poems exult in a life simultaneously crowded and quiet, caught in between things and places, and never quite entirely at home. Xie is a poet of extraordinary perception―both to the tangible world and to “all that is untouchable as far as the eye can reach.”
“Xie comes across as a magician of perspective and scale. . . . [Eye Level] suggests a kind of Fodor’s or Lonely Planet guide to inner life.” Dan Chiasson, The New Yorker
Tom Sleigh, House of Fact, House of Ruin: Poems (Graywolf Press). “‘I hate to admit it, but even the house of fact is a house of ruin,’ writes Tom Sleigh in the title sequence of this extraordinary new collection. Very much of our present moment, in which fact can so easily be manufactured and ruin so easily achieved by pressing ‘Send’ or pulling a trigger, these poems range across the landscapes of contemporary experience. Whether a militia in Libya or a military base in Baghdad, a shantytown in East Africa or an opulent mall on Long Island, these subjects and locations resonate with the psychic and social costs of having let the genie of war, famine, and climate change out of the lamp in the first place. The book ultimately turns on conundrums of selfhood and self-estrangement in which Sleigh urges us toward a different realm, where we might achieve the freedom of spirit to step outside our own circumstances, however imperfectly, and look at ourselves as other, as unfamiliar, as strange. House of Fact, House of Ruinis Sleigh’s most engaging and virtuosic collection to date.”
“In Sleigh’s hands . . . moments of ongoingness mix something of the daily with something of the miraculous. . . . Like [Walt] Whitman, Sleigh here plays with what the observer’s notebook can become. He embeds lines of poetry in journalistic essays like a rogue reporter; conversely, he’ll forge a sonnet or rhymed tercets out of reported language.” Tess Taylor, The New York Times Book Review
Tony Hoagland, Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God: Poems (Graywolf Press). “Tony Hoagland’s poems interrogate human nature and contemporary culture with an intimate and wild urgency, located somewhere between outrage, stand-up comedy, and grief. His new poems are no less observant of the human and the worldly, no less skeptical, and no less amusing, but they have drifted toward the greater depths of open emotion. Over six collections, Hoagland’s poetry has gotten bigger, more tender, and more encompassing. The poems in Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of Godturn his clear-eyed vision toward the hidden spaces―and spaciousness―in the human predicament.”
“Hoagland’s verse is consistently, and crucially, bloodied by a sense of menace and by straight talk.” Dwight Garner, The New York Times
New Poets of Native Nations (Graywolf Press), edited by Heid E. Erdrich, “gathers poets of diverse ages, styles, languages, and tribal affiliations to present the extraordinary range and power of new Native poetry. Heid E. Erdrich has selected twenty-one poets whose first books were published after the year 2000 to highlight the exciting works coming up after Joy Harjo and Sherman Alexie. Collected here are poems of great breadth―long narratives, political outcries, experimental works, and traditional lyrics―and the result is an essential anthology of some of the best poets writing now. Poets included are Tacey M. Atsitty, Trevino L. Brings Plenty, Julian Talamantez Brolaski, Laura Da’, Natalie Diaz, Jennifer Elise Foerster, Eric Gansworth, Gordon Henry, Jr., Sy Hoahwah, LeAnne Howe, Layli Long Soldier, Janet McAdams, Brandy Nalani McDougall, Margaret Noodin, dg okpik, Craig Santos Perez, Tommy Pico, Cedar Sigo, M. L. Smoker, Gwen Westerman, andKarenne Wood.”
I have been much enjoying poet and Professor of English at Davis and Elkins College Bill King’s new collection The Letting Go (Finishing Line Press). It has recalled my reading in its original Latin decades ago in Yale graduate school of Virgil’s Georgics, in which the Roman master dealt with bucolic themes but interspersed these with such human concerns as love and death, political and social upheaval, and the habits of bees as a model for human society. Bill King also artfully mingles everyday life and topical subjects with his passion for the natural world, in the process providing deeply moving commentary on our relationship to the land as well as to family, creative work, and the burdens of living.
Alyson Hagy, Scribe: A Novel (Graywolf Press). “Drawing on traditional folktales and the history and culture of Appalachia, Alyson Hagy has crafted a gripping, swiftly plotted novel that touches on pressing issues of our time―migration, pandemic disease, the rise of authoritarianism―and makes a compelling case for the power of stories to both show us the world and transform it. A brutal civil war has ravaged the country, and contagious fevers have decimated the population. Abandoned farmhouses litter the isolated mountain valleys and shady hollows. The economy has been reduced to barter and trade. n this craggy, unwelcoming world, the central character of Scribe ekes out a lonely living on the family farmstead where she was raised and where her sister met an untimely end. She lets a migrant group known as the Uninvited set up temporary camps on her land, and maintains an uneasy peace with her cagey neighbors and the local enforcer. She has learned how to make paper and ink, and she has become known for her letter-writing skills, which she exchanges for tobacco, firewood, and other scarce resources. An unusual request for a letter from a man with hidden motivations unleashes the ghosts of her troubled past and sets off a series of increasingly calamitous events that culminate in a harrowing journey to a crossroads.”
Eula Biss’s Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays (Graywolf Press). “Notes From No Man's Landis the most accomplished book of essays anyone has written or published so far in the 21st century. . . . It is unimpeachably great.” Salon
“Two of the qualities that make Eula Biss’s essays in Notes from No Man’s Land compelling and beautiful are precision and independence―independence from orthodoxies of the right and left and the conventions of literary essays and their displays of sensibility and sensitivity. And whatever topic she takes up she dissects and analyzes with startling insight that comes from deep reading and original thinking. She’s important to this moment, important to opening up what essays can be, important for setting a standard of integrity and insight, and she’s also a joy to read.” Rebecca Solnit
Eula Biss is an American non-fiction writer. She won the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, the Pushcart Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is a Guggenheim Fellow. She is an editor at Essay Press and is the author of On Immunity: An Inoculation, selected as one of the Ten Best Books of 2014 by The New York Times Book Review. Her essays have appeared in The Believer, Harper’s Magazine, and The New York Times Magazine. She lives in the Chicago area.
Annie Ernaux,The Years (Seven Stories Press), translated by Alison L. Strayer. “Considered by many to be the iconic French memoirist's defining work, The Years was a breakout bestseller when published in France in 2008, and is considered in French Studies departments in the US as a contemporary classic. The Years is a personal narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present—even projections into the future—photos, books, songs, radio, television and decades of advertising, headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and writing notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the times, slogans, brands and names for the ever-proliferating objects, are given voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges. Ernaux makes the passage of time palpable. Time itself, inexorable, narrates its own course, consigning all other narrators to anonymity. A new kind of autobiography emerges, at once subjective and impersonal, private and collective. On its 2008 publication in France, The Years came as a surprise. Though Ernaux had for years been hailed as a beloved, bestselling and award-winning author, The Years was in many ways a departure: both an intimate memoir ‘written’ by entire generations, and a story of generations telling a very personal story. Like the generation before hers, the narrator eschews the ‘I’ for the ‘we’ (or ‘they’, or ‘one’) as if collective life were inextricably intertwined with a private life that in her parents' generation ceased to exist. She writes of her parents' generation (and could be writing of her own book): ‘From a common fund of hunger and fear, everything was told in the ‘we’ and impersonal pronouns.’”
“The Years is an earnest, fearless book, a Remembrance of Things Past for our age of media domination and consumerism, for our period of absolute commodity fetishism.” Edmund White, New York Times Book Review
Honoré de Balzac,The Memoirs of Two Young Wives (New York Review Books Classics), translated by Jordan Stump, Introduction by Morris Dickstein.
“Two very intelligent, very idealistic young women leave the convent school where they became the fastest of friends to return to their families and embark on their new lives. For Renée de Maucombe, this means an arranged marriage with a country gentleman of Provence, a fine if slightly dull man for whom she feels admiration but nothing more. Meanwhile, Louise de Chaulieu makes for her family’s house in Paris, intent on enjoying her freedom to the fullest: glittering balls, the opera, and above all, she devoutly hopes, the torments and ecstasies of true love and passion. What will come of these very different lives?
Despite Honoré de Balzac’s title, these aren’t memoirs; rather, this is an epistolary novel. For some ten years, these two will—enthusiastically if not always faithfully—keep up their correspondence, obeying their vow to tell each other every tiny detail of their strange new lives, comparing their destinies, defending and sometimes bemoaning their choices, detailing the many changes, personal and social, that they undergo. As Balzac writes, ‘Renée is reason. . . . Louise is wildness. . . and both will lose.’ Balzac being Balzac, he seems to argue for the virtues of one of these lives over the other; but Balzac being Balzac, that argument remains profoundly ambiguous. ‘I would,’ he once wrote, ‘rather be killed by Louise than live a long life with Renée.’
Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), one of the greatest and most influential of novelists, was born in Tours and educated at the Collège de Vendôme and the Sorbonne. He began his career as a pseudonymous writer of sensational potboilers before achieving success with a historical novel, The Chouans. Balzac then conceived his great work, La Comédie Humaine, an ongoing series of novels in which he set out to offer a complete picture of contemporary society and manners. Always working under an extraordinary burden of debt, Balzac wrote some eighty-five novels in the course of his last twenty years, including such masterpieces as Père Goriot, Eugénie Grandet, Lost Illusions, and Cousin Bette. In 1850, he married Eveline Hanska, a rich Polish woman with whom he had long conducted an intimate correspondence. Three months later he died.
Translator Jordan Stump is a professor of French at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln; the author, most recently, of The Other Book: Bewilderments of Fiction; and the translator of some twenty works of (mostly) contemporary French prose by authors such as Marie NDiaye, Éric Chevillard, Antoine Volodine, and Jean-Philippe Toussaint. His translation of Claude Simon’s The Jardin des Planteswon the French-American Foundation’s annual translation prize in 2001.
Morris Dickstein, who wrote the introduction, is a distinguished professor emeritus at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the author, most recently, of Dancing in the Dark, a Cultural
History of the Great Depression, and Why Not Say What Happened, a memoir.
“The 19th century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac.” Oscar Wilde
“Balzac stands signally alone, he is the first and foremost member of his craft. . . . An imagination of the highest power, an unequalled intensity of vision. . . . What he did above all was to read the universe, as hard and as loud as he could, into the France of his time.” Henry James
“I have learned more [from Balzac] than from all the professional historians, economists, and statisticians put together.” Friedrich Engels
“In Balzac, every living soul is a weapon loaded to the very muzzle with will.” Charles Baudelaire
“Balzac was both a greedy child and an indefatigable observer of a greedy age, at once a fantastic and a genius, yet possessing a simple core of common sense.” V. S. Pritchett
“Balzac was by turns a saint, a criminal, an honest judge, a corrupt judge, a minister, a fob, a harlot, a duchess, and always a genius.” André Maurois
Henry Green,Doting (New York Review Books Classics), Introduction by Michael Gorra. “The last of Henry Green’s novels, is, as its title would suggest, a story of yearning and lusting and aging in which a wife and a brash young woman run hilarious circles around a hapless hardworking civil servant suddenly seized by long-dormant urges. Like its immediate predecessor, Nothing, it stands out from the rest of Green’s work in its brilliant, experimental use of dialogue. Green was fascinated with the extravagance, ambiguity, absurdity, and unintentional implications and consequences of everyday human communication, and in Doting language slips and slides the better to reveal the absurdity and persistence of love and desire, exciting laughter while troubling the heart.”
“The intelligence, the blazing gifts of imagery, dialogue, construction, and form, the power to feel both what can and what never can be said, give Henry Green’s work an intensity greater . . . than that of any other writer of imaginative fiction today. . . . His remains the most interesting and vital imagination in English fiction in our time.” Eudora Welty
Henry Green’s, Nothing (New York Review Books Classics), Introduction by Francine Prose, “like the closely related Doting, is a book that is almost entirely composed in dialogue, since in these late novels nothing so interested Green as how words resist, twist, and expose our intentions; how they fail us, lead us on, make fools of us, and may, in spite of ourselves, even save us, at least for a time. Nothing spills over with the bizarre and delicious comedy and poetry of human incoherence.”
“Nothing and Doting. . . actually display something close to old-fashioned formal perfection.” Charles McGrath, The New York Times Book Review
Henry Green’s, Blindness( New York Review Classics), Introduction by Daniel Mendelsohn. “Blindness, Henry Green’s first novel, begun while he was still at Eton and finished before he left university, began his career as a master of British modernism. It is the story of John Haye, a young student with literary airs. It starts with an excerpt from his diary, brimming with excitement and affectation and curiosity about life and literature. Then a freak accident robs John of his sight, plunging him into despair. Forced to live with his high-handed, horsey stepmother in the country, John begins a weird dalliance with a girl named Joan, leading to a new determination. Blindness is the curse of youth and inexperience and love and ambition, but blindness, John will discover, can also be the source of vision.”
I found Peter Wolfe’s Henry Green: Havoc in the House of Fiction (McFarland) very illuminating as a guide to Henry Green’s novels. Peter Wolfe is a Curators' Professor of English at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The author of more than 20 books, he has also taught in Canada, New Zealand, Taiwan, Russia, Poland, and Australia.
“By mid-career, many successful writers have found a groove and their readers come to expect a familiar consistency and fidelity. Not so with Henry Green (1905-1973). He prefers uncertainty over reason and fragmentation over cohesion, and rarely lets the reader settle into a nice cozy read. Evil, he suggests, can be as instructive as good. Through Green's use of paradoxical and ambiguous language, his novels bring texture to the flatness of life, making the world seem bigger and closer. We soon stop worrying about what Hitler's bombs have in store for the Londoners of Caught (1943) and Back (1946) and start thinking about what they have in store for each other. Praised in his lifetime as England's top fiction author, Green is largely overlooked today. This book presents a comprehensive analysis of his work for a new generation of readers.”
Notes, bibliography, index.
David Szalay’s London and the South-East: A Novel (Graywolf Press), “which won the Betty Trask Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, is both a gloriously told shaggy-dog story about the compromising inanities of office life and consumer culture, and the perfect introduction to one of the best writers at work today. Paul Rainey, the hapless antihero at the center of this “compulsively readable” (Independent on Sunday) story works, miserably, in ad sales. He sells space in magazines that hardly exist, and through a fog of booze and drugs dimly perceives that he is dissatisfied with his life―professionally, sexually, recreationally, the whole nine yards. If only there were something he could do about it―and “something” seems to fall into his lap when a meeting with an old friend and fellow salesman, Eddy Jaw, leads to the offer of a new job. But when that offer turns out to be as misleading as Paul’s own sales patter, his life is transformed in ways very much more peculiar than he ever thought possible.”
“[A] dark, antic satire. . . . Szalay is a barbed observer of office life, and his study is most scathing when inspecting the perils of extracting self-worth from work.” Dwight Garner, The New Yorker
“Watch for many twists and turns in this fiendishly plotted page-turner.” Library Journal
David Szalay’s Spring: A Novel (Graywolf Press) “explores the complex worlds of love and money, each with their surprises and vicissitudes. This novel made me feel in the best way that I was eavesdropping on a series of fascinating conversations. An insightful portrait of contemporary England.” Margot Livesey, author of eight novels, numerous short stories, and essays on the craft of writing fiction.
“David Szalay builds a novel of immense resonance as he cycles though perspectives that add layers of depth to the hesitations, missteps, and tensions as [the protagonist] James tries to win Katherine. James's other pursuit is money, and Spring follows his investments and schemes, from a half share in a thoroughbred to a suit-and-tie day job he's taken to pay the bills. Spring is a sharply tuned novel so nuanced and precise in its psychology that it establishes Szalay as a major talent.”
David Szalay’s All That Man Is: A Novel (Graywolf Press) is “A magnificent and ambitiously conceived portrait of contemporary life, by a genius of realism. All That Man Is traces the arc of life from the spring of youth to the winter of old age by following nine men who range from the working-class ex-grunt to the pompous college student, the middle-aged loser to the Russian oligarch. Ludicrous and inarticulate, shocking and despicable, vital, pitiable, and hilarious, these men paint a picture of modern manhood. David Szalay is a master of a new kind of realism that vibrates with detail, intelligence, relevance, and devastating pathos. In All That Man Is, a Man Booker Prize finalist and the winner of the Gordon Burn Prize and the Plimpton Prize, he brilliantly illuminates the physical and emotional terrain of an increasingly globalized Europe.”
“Szalay’s prose . . . is frequently brilliant, remarkable for its grace and economy . . . [,em>All That Man Is] has a new urgency now that the post-Cold War dream of a Europe of open borders and broad, shared identity has come under increasing question.” Garth Greenwell, The New York Times Book Review
Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach: A Novel (Scribner) “’makes you forget you’re reading historical fiction at all’ (Elle) and takes us into a world populated by gangsters, sailors, divers, bankers, and union men in a dazzling, propulsive exploration of a transformative moment in the lives and identities of women and men, of America and the world.”
Jennifer Egan is the author of five previous books of fiction, including A Visit from the Goon Squad, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
“A magnificent achievement, at once a suspenseful noir intrigue and a transporting work of lyrical beauty and emotional heft.” The Boston Globe.
John Banville, Mrs. Osmond: A Novel( Vintage; Reprint). If you’ve always wondered what happened to Mrs. Osmond (née Isabel Archer, heroine of Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady), this is your cup of (English) tea, John Banville’s cloning of the young American woman who took up residence in Italy with one of the singular villains of English literature. “In Mrs. Osmond, John Banville continues the story of Isabel Archer, the young protagonist of Henry James’s beloved The Portrait of a Lady. Eager but naïve, in James’s novel Isabel comes into a large, unforeseen inheritance and marries the charming, penniless, and—as Isabel finds out too late—cruel and deceitful Gilbert Osmond. Here Banville imagines Isabel’s second chapter telling the story of a woman reawakened by grief and the knowledge that she has been grievously wronged, and determined to resume her quest for freedom and independence. A masterly novel of betrayal, corruption, and moral ambiguity, Mrs. Osmond would have thrilled James himself.’
“Banville’s ability to channel James’s style and prose rhythms is astonishing. I can’t imagine anyone who could have done it better.” Jeffrey Eugenides, The New York Times Book Review
Zachary Mason’s, Metamorphica: Fiction (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) “transforms Ovid’s epic poem of endless transformation. It reimagines the stories of Narcissus, Pygmalion and Galatea, Midas and Atalanta, and strings them together like the stars in constellations―even Ovid becomes a story. It’s as though the ancient mythologies had been rewritten by Borges or Calvino; Metamorphica is an archipelago in which to linger for a while; it reflects a little light from the morning of the world.”
“Metamorphica is a joy of a book. Mason understands beautifully that traditions are most powerful in their reinvention. Beyond their tremendous lyricism and admirable control, these retellings of Mediterranean myth offer the truest pleasure of all fiction, its immense possibility. Metamorphica brims with imagination and an astonishing empathy that reminds us that even the most ancient of legends can feel urgent to us today, if only we would just listen.” Kanish Tharoor, author of Swimmer Among the Stars.
Maria Dahvana Headley’s The Mere Wife: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) “presents a modern retelling of the literary classic Beowulf, set in American suburbia as two mothers―a housewife and a battle-hardened veteran―fight to protect those they love in The Mere Wife. From the perspective of those who live in Herot Hall, the suburb is a paradise. Picket fences divide buildings―high and gabled―and the community is entirely self-sustaining. Each house has its own fireplace, each fireplace is fitted with a container of lighter fluid, and outside―in lawns and on playgrounds―wildflowers seed themselves in neat rows. But for those who live surreptitiously along Herot Hall’s periphery, the subdivision is a fortress guarded by an intense network of gates, surveillance cameras, and motion-activated lights. For Willa, the wife of Roger Herot (heir of Herot Hall), life moves at a charmingly slow pace. She flits between mommy groups, playdates, cocktail hour, and dinner parties, always with her son, Dylan, in tow. Meanwhile, in a cave in the mountains just beyond the limits of Herot Hall lives Gren, short for Grendel, as well as his mother, Dana, a former soldier who gave birth as if by chance. Dana didn’t want Gren, didn’t plan Gren, and doesn’t know how she got Gren, but when she returned from war, there he was. When Gren, unaware of the borders erected to keep him at bay, ventures into Herot Hall and runs off with Dylan, Dana’s and Willa’s worlds collide.”
“So: I loved The Mere Wifeand I bet lots of other people will too . . . Everyone should read The Mere Wife. It's a wonderfully unexpected dark/funny/lyrical/angry retelling of Beowulf; what's not to like?” Emily Wilson, translator of The Odyssey.
“Smart, tough modern flip of Beowulf, told through Grendel's mother.” Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale.
I much enjoyed Debbie Burke’s Glissando: A story of love, lust and jazz( Waldorf Publishing). “Sharp-witted paralegal Ellie Greenberg has a dynamite career at a law firm in the Catskill Mountains of New York. Happily divorced, in the middle years of her life and trying to keep all her plates spinning in the air, she decompresses from the demands of her career by joining the jazz scene at a local college. The instant she sees the very-married new soloist, trumpet player Vincent Keyes, she's speared directly in the heart by Cupid's arrow. Unfortunately, Ellie has also walked straight into the romantic cross-hairs of ace lawyer Stan Feldman. Ellie tries to gain her footing in the emotional tornado, where the ride is thrilling but ultimately unsustainable. She agonizes over choosing between the two men...or changing her life completely.”
“Glissandois fun and feels very real. Ms. Burke knows her stuff.” Michael Levin, New York Times best-selling author and CEO of Business Ghost Inc.
“A supreme jazz love story that swings with a deep appreciation for the music and its practitioners.” Lezlie Harrison, vocalist and radio announcer at WBGO-FM.
Cyrus Manasseh,The Lead Guitarist (Independently published/Available on Amazon) is a splendid coming-of-age saga in the pop music world. “In London, in the vibrant 1990s some young musicians led by a lead guitarist and his brother head for stardom playing a popular kind of music. However, after they find a relative amount of success, Alex, the lead guitarist discovers that the path he had chosen and had always wanted for himself was not what he wanted for some reason and decides to head off in a different direction.”
Cyrus Manasseh is a novelist, essayist, philosopher, historian, editor and was a musician before he also took up writing. He teaches in universities and privately as a higher education consultant. He is an international scholar and has presented his ideas in a number of countries. Professor Cyrus Manasseh Ph.D. is also a Freelance Researcher and author of books The Lead Guitarist; The Island Library; and The Problematic of Video Art in the Museum 1968-90. He is also author of numerous essays and scientific articles in the field of art history, film, architecture, video, museums, evolving media and theatre-drama. He has presented his research at international academic forums which include those in London, Sydney, Perth, Venice, Prague, and Harvard, where he was session chair, and has lectured and has taught extensively in Australian Universities. He was a finalist for the International Award for Excellence in the Constructed Environment Journal Writers Award Annual Prize for the academic essay “An Inquiry into the Design and the Aesthetics of the Venice Biennale Pavilions and Film.” His novel The Lead Guitarist is currently published here on Amazon. His website is at https://drcyrusmanasseh.academia.edu/
I received, respectively, as Father’s Day and 88th Birthday gifts from my son’s Sutton and Neale, two splendid Library of America collections: Sarah Orne Jewett,Novels and Stories and Wendell Berry, Port William Novels & Stories. And from my daughter-in-law Amy Peter Taylor, Complete Stories 1960-1992 (Library of America). I have much enjoyed dipping into them.
“In her nuanced and sharply etched novels and short stories,Sarah Orne Jewett captured the inner life and hidden emotional drama of outwardly quiet New England coastal towns. Set against the background of long Maine winters, hardscrabble farms, and the sea, her stories of independent, capable women struggling to find fulfillment in their lives and work have a surprisingly modern resonance.”
“For more than fifty years, in eight novels and forty two short stories, Wendell Berry has created an indelible portrait of rural America through the lens of Port William, Kentucky, one of the most fully imagined places in American literature. Taken together, these novels and stories form a masterwork of American prose: straightforward, spare, and lyrical.”
“Born and raised in Tennessee, Peter Taylor was the great chronicler of the American Upper South, capturing its gossip and secrets, its divided loyalties and morally complicated legacies in tales of pure-distilled brilliance. Now, for his centennial year, the Library of America and acclaimed short story writer Ann Beattie present an unprecedented two-volume edition of Taylor’s complete short fiction, all fifty-nine of the stories published in his lifetime in the order in which they were composed.” (I immediately ordered Volume 1, Peter Taylor: Complete Stories 1938-1959.)
Harry Mathews’ The Solitary Twin (New Directions) “is an engaging mystery that simultaneously considers the art of storytelling. When identical twins arrive at an unnamed fishing port, they become the focus of the residents' attention and gossip. The stories they tell about the young men uncover a dizzying web of connections, revealing passion, sex, and murder. Fates are surprisingly intertwined, and the result is a moving, often hilarious, novel that questions our assumptions about life and literature.”
Harry Mathews (1930–2017) was born in New York. A founding editor of the literary journal Locus Solus, he wrote novels, poetry, short fiction, essays, and translations from the French. His many books include Cigarettes(1987), The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium(1999), and The Human Country(2002).
“The Solitary Twinis the perfect endnote for Harry Mathews and a superb point of entry for new readers, encapsulating his lifelong commitment to formal invention while simply being an excellent novel in its own right.” J.W. McCormack, BOMB Magazine
Helen DeWitt’sSome Trick: Thirteen Stories (New Directions) is “a baker’s dozen of stories all with Helen DeWitt’s razor-sharp genius. For sheer unpredictable brilliance, Gogol may come to mind, but no author alive today takes a reader as far as Helen DeWitt into the funniest, most yonder dimensions of possibility. Her jumping-off points might be statistics, romance, the art world’s piranha tank, games of chance and games of skill, the travails of publishing, or success. ‘Look,’ a character begins to explain, laying out some gambit reasonably enough, even if facing a world of boomeranging counterfactuals, situations spinning out to their utmost logical extremes, and Rube Goldberg-like moving parts, where things prove ‘more complicated than they had first appeared’ and ‘at 3 a.m. the circumstances seem to attenuate.’ In various ways, each tale carries DeWitt’s signature poker-face lament regarding the near-impossibility of the life of the mind when one is made to pay to have the time for it, in a world so sadly ‘taken up with all sorts of paraphernalia superfluous, not to say impedimental, to ratiocination.’”
“If there's any author bookish types trust to take them down the twistiest of rabbit holes with humor and winking unpredictability, Helen DeWitt is it. Take the plunge with these 13 short stories.” Elle Magazine
Clarice Lispector’sThe Chandelier (New Directions), translated by Benjamin Moser and Magdalena Edwards. “Fresh from the enormous success of her debut novel Near to the Wild Heart, Hurricane Clarice let loose something stormier with The Chandelier. In a body of work renowned for its potent idiosyncratic genius, The Chandelierin many ways has pride of place. ‘It stands out,’ her biographer Benjamin Moser noted, ‘in a strange and difficult body of work, as perhaps her strangest and most difficult book.’ Of glacial intensity, consisting almost entirely of interior monologues―interrupted by odd and jarring fragments of dialogue and action―the novel moves in slow waves that crest in moments of revelation. As Virginia seeks freedom via creation, the drama of her isolated life is almost entirely internal: from childhood, she sculpts clay figurines with ‘the best clay one could desire: white, supple, sticky, cold. She got a clear and tender material from which she could shape a world. How, how to explain the miracle.’ While on one level simply the story of a woman’s life, The Chandelier’sreal drama lies in Lispector’s attempt ‘to find the nucleus made of a single instant . . . the tenuous triumph and the defeat, perhaps nothing more than breathing.’ The Chandelier pushes Lispector’s lifelong quest for that nucleus into deeper territories than any of her other amazing works.”
“It's a shaggy stop-motion masterpiece, plotless and argument-less and obsessed with the nature of thought. . . . Every page vibrates with feeling. It's not enough to say that Lispector bends language, or uses words in new ways. Plenty of modernists do that. No one else writes prose this rich.” Lily Meyer, NPR
Rachel Cusk, Kudos: A Novel (Outline Trilogy) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). “In this conclusion to her groundbreaking trilogy, Cusk unflinchingly explores the nature of family and art, justice and love, and the ultimate value of suffering. She is without question one of our most important living writers.”
“Precise and haunting . . . Unforgettable.” Jenny Offill, The New York Times
“[Cusk] has achieved something both radical and beautiful . . . . [Kudosis] a book about failure that is not, in itself, a failure. In fact, it is a breathtaking success.” Katy Waldman, The New Yorker
Nathaniel Rich’sKing Zeno: A Novel (MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux) “is a historical crime novel and a searching inquiry into man’s dreams of immortality. New Orleans, a century ago: a city determined to reshape its destiny and, with it, the nation’s. Downtown, a new American music is born. In Storyville, prostitution is outlawed and the police retake the streets with maximum violence. In the Ninth Ward, laborers break ground on a gigantic canal that will split the city, a work of staggering human ingenuity intended to restore New Orleans’s faded mercantile glory. The war is ending and a prosperous new age dawns. But everything is thrown into chaos by a series of murders committed by an ax-wielding maniac with a peculiar taste in music.”
“The novel, like a city, somehow coheres, as Rich never loses control of the riotous raw material . . . Rich is a gifted portraitist of his three main characters . . . This is a novel with a high body count, but it has far too much energy ever to feel morbid." Chris Bachelder, The New York Times Book Review
“Has anyone written the Great Novel of New Orleans? If not, Nathaniel Rich’s sprawling, funny, tragic, generous new work, King Zeno, comes close. It reminded this reviewer of John Dos Passos’ U.S.A. trilogy, with its clever melding of real and fictional events, its snippets of newspaper articles, and astonishingly memorable characters . . . . King Zenois the New Orleans novel we’ve been waiting for.” Arlene McKanic, BookPage
I can’t wait to read the following six books to my grandchildren, now six and eight.
Franz Brandenberg’sI Wish I Was Sick, Too! (New York Review Children's Collection), illustrated by Aliki, is “A sweet tale about kindness, jealousy, and fairness perfect for reading when a child is sick or well. Edward is sick and Elizabeth is well, and nothing could be more unfair! Edward gets to stay in bed and everyone treats him like a prince. Elizabeth has to get out of bed, get dressed, go to school, come home and do chores, finish her homework and practice the piano. ‘I wish I was sick too!’ Elizabeth complains, and soon, to her dawning dismay, her wish is granted. Jealousy and kindness, fairness and responsibility, the passionate complaints and pleasures of childhood are well represented here by a close-knit and surprisingly intellectual cat family, drawn with good humor and sympathy by the illustrator-author couple, Aliki and Franz Brandenberg. The perfect book to read when you're sick, or when you're well and wish you were sick too.”
Doris Fisher,Jackson Sundown: Native American Bronco Buster, illustrations by Sarah Cotton (Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.). “When the U.S. Army Calvary attacked the Nez Perce tribe, Jackson Sundown’s trick riding allowed him to escape. For years afterwards he lived a quiet life, until at the age of 49 he entered his first rodeo. His performance was captivating and the crowds loved him! Sundown dreamed of winning first place at a bronc championship―a feat never accomplished by a Native American. Will he win? Find out in this thrilling biography for young readers. Follow Jackson Sundown on his journey from trick-riding at rodeos to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. His courageous story, told in vibrant illustrations, will inspire children to overcome obstacles on the way to their dream!”
Mark Weakland,The West End Treehouse Mystery (Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.). “In pursuit of ‘the world’s most awesome tree house,’ best friends Matt and Jerry spend the summer after sixth grade hauling wood up the hillside of their Pennsylvania hometown. The boys’ freedom is tempered by trying to avoid the attention of Trio Diablo, a menacing gang of teenagers. Their summer soon changes when they venture into the hollow on the other side of the hill. The friends stumble upon a sinister witch and her raving captive―but everything is not as it seems! An unsettling discovery forces Matt and Jerry to confront serious adult issues and even real danger. The boys navigate difficult situations and learn to face fear and change in this coming-of-age tale.”
Laurie Knowlton, Monster Cake, illustrations by Chase Jense (Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.). “Mariah’s baking a cake for some monsters, and the measurements are all messed up. Who knew that 2 half cups equal 1 whole cup! Mariah is so confused. Does 30 minutes really equal a half of an hour? Brennan tries to help her figure it all out, smirking all the way, but the monsters will be coming over soon! Quick, bake that cake! Soon the cake is finished, smelling perfectly boggish, just like Mariah wanted . . . But, wait, Brennan wonders, why are monsters coming over anyway?
This extra special and delightfully silly story teaches children fractions in a fun, exciting way, all while showing the special power of friendship and the funny way perspective can be skewed. An action packed and sweet tasting activity is included at the end of the story so all little ‘monsters’ can bake along!”
Charles Dickens and Tess Newall, A Guinea Pig Christmas Carol(Guinea Pig Classics)(Bloomsbury Publishing). “The ultimate and timeless Christmas story, with cuddly guinea pigs in the starring roles! Miserable to the core and wholly unwilling to extend a paw to help those in desperate need, the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge says ‘bah, Humbug!’ to the festive season. But one night he is visited by three Christmas Spirits who take him on a journey through time, so he can see the error of his ways and learn the true meaning of Christmas. This is Charles Dickens's joyful Christmas tale, retold in an entirely new way.”
Paul Many,Dinomorphosis, illustrations by Stan Jaskiel (Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.). “When Gregory wakes up in the body of a dinosaur on the morning of his big class presentation, he's worried. He's scheduled to talk about the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and he's practiced all week so he won't be scared in front of the class. But he didn't plan for this! As soon as Gregory gets out of bed, everything starts to go wrong. He accidentally spills the orange juice with his clumsy tail, forgets his diorama, and can only speak in ROAR. What will he do when his favorite teacher, Mrs. Anning, calls on him to present his project? In this loose adaptation of the literary classic by Franz Kafka, author Paul Many encourages children not to give up when things get scary. Stan Jaskiel's humorous illustrations show Gregory adapting to his startling new reality and, once he has, how everything changes!”
Steve Brusatte’s The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World (William Morrow) “masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and newhistory of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy. Captivating and revelatory, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaursis a book for the ages. Brusatte traces the evolution of dinosaurs from their inauspicious start as small shadow dwellers—themselves the beneficiaries of a mass extinction caused by volcanic eruptions at the beginning of the Triassic period—into the dominant array of species every wide-eyed child memorizes today, T. Rex, Triceratops, Brontosaurus, and more. This gifted scientist and writer re-creates the dinosaurs’ peak during the Jurassic and Cretaceous, when thousands of species thrived, and winged and feathered dinosaurs, the prehistoric ancestors of modern birds, emerged. The story continues to the end of the Cretaceous period, when a giant asteroid or comet struck the planet and nearly every dinosaur species (but not all) died out, in the most extraordinary extinction event in earth’s history, one full of lessons for today as we confront a ‘sixth extinction.’
Brusatte also recalls compelling stories from his globe-trotting expeditions during one of the most exciting eras in dinosaur research—which he calls “a new golden age of discovery”—and offers thrilling accounts of some of the remarkable findings he and his colleagues have made, including primitive human-sized tyrannosaurs; monstrous carnivores even larger than T. rex; and paradigm-shifting feathered raptors from China. An electrifying scientific history that unearths the dinosaurs’ epic saga, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs will be a definitive and treasured account for decades to come.”
“A masterpiece of science writing.” Washington Post
“The ultimate dinosaur biography. Riveting.” Scientific American
Photographs, notes, index.
David Bainbridge’s Stripped Bare: The Art of Animal Anatomy (Princeton University Press) “brings together some of the most arresting images ever produced, from the earliest studies of animal form to the technicolor art of computer-generated anatomies. David Bainbridge draws on representative illustrations from different eras to discuss the philosophical, scientific, and artistic milieus from which they emerged. He vividly describes the unique aesthetics of each phase of anatomical endeavor, providing new insights into the exquisite anatomical drawings of Leonardo and Albrecht Dürer in the era before printing, Jean Héroard’s cutting and cataloging of the horse during the age of Louis XIII, the exotic pictorial menageries of the Comte de Buffon in the eighteenth century, anatomical illustrations from Charles Darwin’s voyages, the lavish symmetries of Ernst Haeckel’s prints, and much, much more. Featuring a wealth of breathtaking color illustrations throughout, Stripped Bare is a panoramic tour of the intricacies of vertebrate life as well as an expansive history of the peculiar and beautiful ways humans have attempted to study and understand the natural world. For more than two thousand years, comparative anatomy―the study of anatomical variation among different animal species―has been used to make arguments in natural philosophy, reinforce religious dogma, and remind us of our own mortality. This stunningly illustrated compendium traces the intertwined intellectual and artistic histories of comparative anatomy from antiquity to today.”
David Bainbridge is University Clinical Veterinary Anatomist at the University of Cambridge. His books include Curvology: The Origins and Power of Female Body Shape and Beyond the Zonules of Zinn: A Fantastic Journey through Your Brain.
Illustrations, index.
Jaron Lanier,Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (Henry Holt and Co.). “Lanier, who participates in no social media, offers powerful and personal reasons for all of us to leave these dangerous online platforms. Lanier’s reasons for freeing ourselves from social media’s poisonous grip include its tendency to bring out the worst in us, to make politics terrifying, to trick us with illusions of popularity and success, to twist our relationship with the truth, to disconnect us from other people even as we are more “connected” than ever, to rob us of our free will with relentless targeted ads. How can we remain autonomous in a world where we are under continual surveillance and are constantly being prodded by algorithms run by some of the richest corporations in history that have no way of making money other than being paid to manipulate our behavior? How could the benefits of social media possibly outweigh the catastrophic losses to our personal dignity, happiness, and freedom? Lanier remains a tech optimist, so while demonstrating the evil that rules social media business models today, he also envisions a humanistic setting for social networking that can direct us toward a richer and fuller way of living and connecting with our world.”
W. Royal Stokes, a novelist and a former professor of Greek and Latin languages and literature and ancient history, was the 2014 recipient of the Jazz Journalists Association’s Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism Award. He has been observing the jazz, blues, and popular music worlds since the early 1940s. He was editor of Jazz Notes (the quarterly journal of the Jazz Journalists Association) from 1992 to 2001, was Program Director of WGTB-FM (D.C.) in the 1970s, and has participated in the annual Down Beat Critics Poll since the 1980s. He hosted his weekly programs “I thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say . . . .” andSince Minton’s on public radio in the 1970s and ’80s. He has been the Washington Post's jazz critic and editor of JazzTimes and is author of The Jazz Scene: An Informal History from New Orleans to 1990; Swing Era New York: The Jazz Photographs of Charles Peterson; Living the Jazz Life: Conversations with Forty Musicians about Their Careers in Jazz; and Growing Up With Jazz: Twenty-Four Musicians Talk About Their Lives and Careers. His trilogy of novels Backwards Over was published in 2017 and his The Essential W. Royal Stokes Jazz, Blues & Beyond Readerwill see print in early 2019. Publications he has written for, in addition to the Washington Post and JazzTimes, include Down Beat, Mississippi Rag, Jazz Notes,JazzHouse.org, and JJA News. A founding member of the JJA, he authored, for JJA News, “The Jazz Journalists Association: A 25-Year Retrospective” (http://news.jazzjournalists.org/2013/06/the-jazz-journalists-association-a-25-year-retrospective/). He is currently at work on a memoir.