John Francis Davis's Books

Blowin' Hot and Cool

Jazz and Its Critics

By: John Gennari

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In the illustrious and richly documented history of American jazz, no figure has been more controversial than the jazz critic. Jazz critics can be revered or reviled—often both—but they should not be ignored. And while the tradition of jazz has been covered from seemingly every angle, nobody has ever turned the pen back on itself to chronicle the many writers who have helped define how we listen to and how we understand jazz. That is, of course, until now. In Blowin’ Hot and Cool, John Gennari provides a definitive history of jazz criticism from the 1920s to the present. The music itself is prominent in his account, as are the musicians—from Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington to Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Roscoe Mitchell, and beyond. But the work takes its shape from fascinating stories of the tradition’s key critics—Leonard Feather, Martin Williams, Whitney Balliett, Dan Morgenstern, Gary Giddins, and Stanley Crouch, among many others. Gennari is the first to show the many ways these critics have mediated the relationship between the musicians and the audience—not merely as writers, but in many cases as producers, broadcasters, concert organizers, and public intellectuals as well. For Gennari, the jazz tradition is not so much a collection of recordings and performances as it is a rancorous debate—the dissonant noise clamoring in response to the sounds of jazz. Against the backdrop of racial strife, class and gender issues, war, and protest that has defined the past seventy-five years in America, Blowin’ Hot and Cool brings to the fore jazz’s most vital critics and the role they have played not only in defining the history of jazz but also in shaping jazz’s significance in American culture and life.

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Page Count

495

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226289249

ISBN 13

9780226289243

The Kentucky Encyclopedia

By: John E. Kleber

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The Kentucky Encyclopedia

By: John E. Kleber

The Kentucky Encyclopedia's 2,000-plus entries are the work of more than five hundred writers. Their subjects reflect all areas of the commonwealth and span the time from prehistoric settlement to today's headlines, recording Kentuckians' achievements in art, architecture, business, education, politics, religion, science, and sports. Biographical sketches portray all of Kentucky's governors and U.S. senators, as well as note congressmen and state and local politicians. Kentucky's impact on the national scene is registered in the lives of such figures as Carry Nation, Henry Clay, Louis Brandeis, and Alben Barkley. The commonwealth's high range from writers Harriette Arnow and Jesse Stuart, reformers Laura Clay and Mary Breckinridge, and civil rights leaders Whitney Young, Jr., and Georgia Powers, to sports figures Muhammad Ali and Adolph Rupp and entertainers Loretta Lynn, Merle Travis, and the Everly Brothers. Entries describe each county and county seat and each community with a population above 2,500. Broad overview articles examine such topics as agriculture, segregation, transportation, literature, and folklife. Frequently misunderstood aspects of Kentucky's history and culture are clarified and popular misconceptions corrected. The facts on such subjects as mint juleps, Fort Knox, Boone's coonskin cap, the Kentucky hot brown, and Morgan's Raiders will settle many an argument. For both the researcher and the more casual reader, this collection of facts and fancies about Kentucky and Kentuckians will be an invaluable resource.

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Page Count

1104

Publisher

University Press of Kentucky

ISBN 10

0813128838

ISBN 13

9780813128832

Mathematical Methods in Physics and Engineering

By: John W. Dettman

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Mathematical Methods in Physics and Engineering

By: John W. Dettman

Algebraically based approach to vectors, mapping, diffraction, and other topics in applied math also covers generalized functions, analytic function theory, and more. Additional topics include sections on linear algebra, Hilbert spaces, calculus of variations, boundary value problems, integral equations, analytic function theory, and integral transform methods. Exercises. 1969 edition.

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Page Count

450

Publisher

Courier Corporation

Published Date

ISBN 10

0486656497

ISBN 13

9780486656496

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Four Smoking Guns

By: John Fazio

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The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Four Smoking Guns

By: John Fazio

Covering one of the most defining moment of America's history, The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln aims to lay the multitude of theories surrounding Lincoln’s assassination to rest. Immediately after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, suspicion naturally fell on Confederate leaders as being responsible for the great crime. The belief in their complicity faded when the case against Jefferson Davis and other unindicted co-conspirators collapsed at the trial of John Wilkes Booth’s action team (Booth was dead) in May and June, 1865. The belief then hibernated for 123 years, during which period the prevailing wisdom was that Booth had in fact acted with the help of no one other than his team, with the possible exception of Dr. Samuel Mudd and Mary Surratt. In 1988, however, assassination historians James O. Hall, William A. Tidwell and David Gaddy thoroughly discredited the simple conspiracy theory in their seminal work Come Retribution, holding that the original suspicions were right after all. In 1995, Tidwell followed with a solo titled April ’65 in which he strengthened the case against Confederate leaders. The authors’ conclusions quickly gained acceptance by many experts in the field, including the author of this work, which is intended to remove any remaining doubt as to the validity of the theory. It does so by describing in detail four subplots in the overall plot to murder the President, subplots that demonstrate unequivocally that Booth was merely a pawn in the hands of far more powerful, influential and purposeful men than he, men whose backs were to the wall and who would therefore stop at nothing to avert the catastrophe that they had fought four long years to prevent and that was now upon them.

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Page Count

241

Publisher

Pen and Sword History

Published Date

ISBN 10

1399046853

ISBN 13

9781399046855

American Drawings and Watercolors in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

John Singer Sargent

By: Stephanie L. Herdrich,John Singer Sargent,Helene Barbara Weinberg,Marjorie Shelley,Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)

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American Drawings and Watercolors in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

John Singer Sargent

By: Stephanie L. Herdrich,John Singer Sargent,Helene Barbara Weinberg,Marjorie Shelley,Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)

The Museum's collection illuminates all aspects of Sargent's career. The drawings and watercolors in particular reflect his activity outside the portrait studio: his sojourns in Spain, Morocco and elsewhere in North Africa, and in the Middle East; his enduring fascination with Venice; his holidays in the Italian lake district and the Alps; his tours of North America, including Florida and the Rocky Mountains; his visit as an official war artist to the western front in 1918; and his work as a muralist at the Boston Public Library, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Harvard University's Widener Library."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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Page Count

444

Publisher

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Published Date

ISBN 10

0870999524

ISBN 13

9780870999529

No One Avoided Danger

NAS Kaneohe Bay and the Japanese Attack of 7 December 1941

By: John F Di Virgilio,Robert J Cressman,J Michael Wenger

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No One Avoided Danger

NAS Kaneohe Bay and the Japanese Attack of 7 December 1941

By: John F Di Virgilio,Robert J Cressman,J Michael Wenger

“No One Avoided Danger” is a detailed combat narrative of the 7 December 1941 Japanese attacks on NAS Kaneohe Bay, one of two naval air stations on the island of O‘ahu. Partly because of Kaneohe’s location—15 air miles over a mountain range from the main site of that day’s infamous attack on Pearl Harbor—military historians have largely ignored the station’s story. Moreover, there is an understandable tendency to focus on the massive destruction sustained by the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The attacks on NAS Kaneohe Bay, however, were equally destructive and no less disastrous, notwithstanding the station’s considerable distance from the harbor. The work focuses on descriptions of actions in the air and on the ground at the deepest practical, personal, and tactical level, from both the American and Japanese perspectives. Such a synthesis is possible only by pursuing every conceivable source of American documents, reminiscences, interviews, and photographs. Similarly, the authors sought out Japanese accounts and photography from the attacks, many appearing in print for the first time. Information from the Japanese air group and aircraft carrier action reports has never before been used. On the American side, the authors also have researched the Official Military Personnel Files at the National Personnel Records Center and National Archives in St. Louis, Missouri, extracting service photographs and details of the military careers of American officers and men. The authors are among the first historians to be allowed access to previously unused service records. The authors likewise delved into the background and personalities of key Japanese participants, and have translated and incorporated the Japanese aircrew rosters from the attack. This accumulation of data and information makes possible an intricate and highly integrated story that is unparalleled. The interwoven narratives of both sides provide a deeper understanding of the events near Kane'ohe Bay than any previous history.

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Page Count

209

Publisher

Naval Institute Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1612519253

ISBN 13

9781612519258

Green Gospel

Foundations of Ecotheology

By: John Gatta

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Green Gospel

Foundations of Ecotheology

By: John Gatta

An evocative investigation of ecotheology's first principles, Green Gospel will serve as antidote to the spiritual devastations of the climate crisis. As climate change continues to ravage our planetary home, deepening the divide between Earth and her stewards, churched and unchurched seekers alike are casting about for a spirituality that focuses on the natural world. Just in time, Green Gospel opens a window into the developing realm of ecotheology, defining foundational principles and outlining how these tenets can be lived out through worship and individual practice. To help readers connect with otherwise challenging concepts, Gatta’s Green Gospel draws on illustrative examples from literary works and liturgical texts to transport readers through these artistic portals to a world lit up by God’s grace. Perfect for parish reading groups or individual study, this encompassing yet compact introductory text unites the theological framework of the green movement with spiritual practice, setting forth a comprehensive vision that moves all the way from first principles of Christian doctrine to the practical consequences of today's pressing environmental issues.

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Page Count

161

Publisher

Church Publishing, Inc.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1640656634

ISBN 13

9781640656635

The Mathematics of Games

By: John D. Beasley

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The Mathematics of Games

By: John D. Beasley

Mind-exercising and thought-provoking."—New Scientist If playing games is natural for humans, analyzing games is equally natural for mathematicians. Even the simplest of games involves the fundamentals of mathematics, such as figuring out the best move or the odds of a certain chance event. This entertaining and wide-ranging guide demonstrates how simple mathematical analysis can throw unexpected light on games of every type—games of chance, games of skill, games of chance and skill, and automatic games. Just how random is a card shuffle or a throw of the dice? Is bluffing a valid poker strategy? How can you tell if a puzzle is unsolvable? How large a role does luck play in games like golf and soccer? This book examines each of these issues and many others, along with the general principles behind such classic puzzles as peg solitaire and Rubik's cube. Lucid, instructive, and full of surprises, it will fascinate mathematicians and gamesters alike.

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Page Count

334

Publisher

Courier Corporation

Published Date

ISBN 10

048615162X

ISBN 13

9780486151625

The Infection of Thomas De Quincey

A Psychopathology of Imperialism

By: John Barrell,Professor of English and Co-Director Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies John Barrell

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The Infection of Thomas De Quincey

A Psychopathology of Imperialism

By: John Barrell,Professor of English and Co-Director Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies John Barrell

Thomas De Quincey, best known for his book Confessions of an English Opium Eater, was a journalist and propagandist of Empire, of oriental aggression, and of racial paranoia. The greater part of the fourteen volumes of his collected writings concerns the history, the colonial development, and increasingly the threat presented by the Orient in all its manifestations--human, animal, and microbiological. This remarkable book, which is an account of De Quincey's fears of all things oriental, is also an extraordinary analysis of the psychopathology of mid-Victorian imperialist culture. John Barrell paints a picture of De Quincey as a happy family man, apparently at ease with himself and with the rest of the world, but in fact harboring and expressing the most ferocious and brutal denunciation of Orientals of all kinds and dreaming of exacting from them a terrible retribution. Barrell shows that throughout De Quincey's writings there is a repeated story of the murder or violation of a female victim--either within or outside De Quincey's family--by an oriental criminal This story finds its way into almost everything he wrote: the various versions of his autobiography, his novels and short stories, his biographical and critical writings, his essays on politics, history, and science. Barrell attempts to understand this European terror of the East by an approach that is both historical and psychoanalytic. In particular, he explores the relation between childhood anxiety and imperial guilt in a body of writing in which the fear of violence within the family is imaged as a fear of the oriental, and the private and the public, the sexual and the imperial, the feminine and the exotic are endlessly intertwined. This book will be fascinating reading for those interested in Victorian literature, in psychoanalysis and its relation to literature, in the history of imperialism, and in debates about the characteristics and effects of colonial discourse.

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Page Count

254

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300049323

ISBN 13

9780300049329

Book's by John Francis Davis

Blowin' Hot and Cool

Blowin' Hot and Cool

The Kentucky Encyclopedia

The Kentucky Encyclopedia

Mathematical Methods in Physics and Engineering

Mathematical Methods in Physics and Engineering

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

American Drawings and Watercolors in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

American Drawings and Watercolors in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

No One Avoided Danger

No One Avoided Danger

Green Gospel

Green Gospel

The Mathematics of Games

The Mathematics of Games

The Infection of Thomas De Quincey

The Infection of Thomas De Quincey

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