Ranging from Los Angeles to Havana to the Bronx to the U.S.-Mexico border and from klezmer to hip hop to Latin rock, this groundbreaking book injects popular music into contemporary debates over American identity. Josh Kun, a MacArthur "Genius" Fellow, insists that America is not a single chorus of many voices folded into one, but rather various republics of sound that represent multiple stories of racial and ethnic difference. To this end he covers a range of music and listeners to evoke the ways that popular sounds have expanded our idea of American culture and American identity. Artists as diverse as The Weavers, Café Tacuba, Mickey Katz, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Bessie Smith, and Ozomatli reveal that the song of America is endlessly hybrid, heterogeneous, and enriching—a source of comfort and strength for populations who have been taught that their lives do not matter. Kun melds studies of individual musicians with studies of painters such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and of writers such as Walt Whitman, James Baldwin, and Langston Hughes. There is no history of race in the Americas that is not a history of popular music, Kun claims. Inviting readers to listen closely and critically, Audiotopia forges a new understanding of sound that will stoke debates about music, race, identity, and culture for many years to come.
One of the most important voices of the Harlem Renaissance, Claude McKay is largely recognized for his work during the 1920s, which includes a major collection of poems, Harlem Shadows, as well as a critically acclaimed novel, Home to Harlem. But McKay was never completely comfortable with his literary reputation during this period. Throughout his world travels, he saw himself as an English lyricist. In this compelling examination of the life and works of this complex poet, novelist, journalist, and short story writer, Josh Gosciak sheds light on McKay’s literary contributions beyond his interactions with Harlem Renaissance artists and writers. Working within English literary traditions, McKay crafted a verse out of hybridity and diaspora. Gosciak shows how he reinvigorated a modern pastoral through his encounters with some of the major aesthetic and political movements of the late Victorian and early modern periods. Exploring new archival material as well as many of McKay’s lesser known poetic works, The Shadowed Country provides a unique interpretation of the writings of this major author.
The Seventh Inning Stretch, by noted baseball expert Josh Pahigian addresses all of the most interesting baseball arguments, however frivolous, that fans have been engaging in for decades, and even a few they may have never stopped to consider before.
Having already penned Getting in the Game, his inside scoop on the mayhem within baseball's winter meetings, Josh Lewin once again gives baseball fans a window into the big leagues. By interviewing big league ballplayers about their first day in the majors, Lewin creates fascinating mini-biographies of the players, highlighting the personalities hidden behind the on-field accomplishments. He lets the players recount their own memories of how they made it to the big leagues. In You Never Forget Your First, Lewin shares the stories of players great and less so. Tony Gwynn recalls singling in his first at bat and finding Pete Rose waiting for him at first base with a wink and a warning: "Don't break my record all at once, kid." Bob Brenly heard of his call-up on the car radio while on a family trip to the Grand Canyon. He then stood helplessly in the middle of the Arizona desert after his transmission gave out, trying to convince passersby he was a ballplayer heading to the big leagues and needed a lift to the airport. Duane Kuiper witnessed a fight both on the field and in his own clubhouse his first day in Cleveland. Greg Maddux recalls being stuck at the Chicago River drawbridge, convinced he'd never make it to Wrigley Field in time for his debut. Lewin interviews modern star players such as A-Rod, Barry Bonds, and Manny Ramirez, as well as Hall of Famers such as Jim Palmer, Don Sutton, and George Brett. More than 100 popular baseball players are profiled, complete with the box scores of their big league debuts.
In 1964 an Urban League survey ranked Los Angeles as the most desirable city for African Americans to live in. In 1965 the city burst into flames during one of the worst race riots in the nation's history. How the city came to such a pass—embodying both the best and worst of what urban America offered black migrants from the South—is the story told for the first time in this history of modern black Los Angeles. A clear-eyed and compelling look at black struggles for equality in L.A.'s neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces from the Great Depression to our day, L.A. City Limits critically refocuses the ongoing debate about the origins of America's racial and urban crisis. Challenging previous analysts' near-exclusive focus on northern "rust-belt" cities devastated by de-industrialization, Josh Sides asserts that the cities to which black southerners migrated profoundly affected how they fared. He shows how L.A.'s diverse racial composition, dispersive geography, and dynamic postwar economy often created opportunities—and limits—quite different from those encountered by blacks in the urban North.
If you were as rich as Bill Gates and you started a gay and lesbian university, what would you teach? ... But Andy Coulter's more ambitious than that. He wants to teach physical education, all four years. He wants his own Kinsey Institute, to study human sexuality rigorously, comprehensively, fearlessly."--Page 4 of cover
Is South Los Angeles on the mend? How is it combating the blight of crime, gang violence, high unemployment, and dire poverty? In provocative essays, the contributing authors to "Post-Ghetto" address these questions by pointing out robust signs of hope for the area's residents--an increase in corporate retail investment, a decrease in homicides, a proliferation of nonprofit service providers, a paradigm shift in violence- and gang-prevention programs, and progress toward a strengthened, more racially integrated labor movement. By charting the connections between public policy and the health of a community, the authors offer innovative ideas and visionary strategies for further urban renewal and remediation. Contributors: Jake Alimahomed-Wilson, Andrea Azuma, Edna Bonacich, Robert Gottlieb, Karen M. Hennigan, Jorge N. Leal, Jill Leovy, Cheryl Maxson, Scott Saul, David C. Sloane, Mark Vallianatos, Danny Widener, Natale Zappia
It's the 1980s and the rock landscape is littered with massive hair, synthesizers, and monster riffs, but there is an alternative being born in the sleepy East of America-we just don't know it yet. Before the Internet, MTV, and iPods provided far-off music fans with information and communities-and before Nirvana-kids across the world grew up in relative isolation, dependent on mix tapes and self-created art to slowly spread scenes and trends. It was under these conditions that four young musicians found one another in Boston, Massachusetts, and started a band called Pixies. During their initial seven-year career, Pixies would play some of Europe's most gigantic festivals, keep the press guessing, and cultivate a fervid international fan base hungry for more and more of their unique surf punk. The band worked fast, cranking out four albums at a breakneck pace, but ultimately pressures and personality clashes took their toll: Pixies broke up just as bands were singing their praises as the rock'n'roll innovators. For twelve years, a Pixies reunion seemed impossible, but a sudden announcement in 2004 proclaimed the unthinkable-Pixies were getting back together. Their extremely successful reunion tour finally gave the group something they'd always lacked in their homeland: proof that their bone-rattling music had left an indelible impact. Fool the World tells Pixies' story in the words of those who lived it, from the band members to studio owners, from A&R executives, producers, and visual artists who worked with them to admirers of their music, such as Bono, PJ Harvey, Beck, and Perry Farrell. With new cartoons by Trompe Le Monde illustrator Steven Appleby, Fool the World is a complete journey through the life, death, and rebirth of one of the most influential bands of all time.
Whether on a picnic blanket or a porch swing, the fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in Tin House will help you while away the hours. Tin House is your literary companion for the dog days of Summer. Whether on a picnic blanket or a porch swing, the fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in Tin House will help you while away the hours. Featuring new work from Miller Oberman, Michael Dickman, and Malerie Willens.
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography In this critically acclaimed true crime tale of "welfare queen" Linda Taylor, a Slate editor reveals a "wild, only-in-America story" of political manipulation and murder (Attica Locke, Edgar Award-winning author). On the South Side of Chicago in 1974, Linda Taylor reported a phony burglary, concocting a lie about stolen furs and jewelry. The detective who checked it out soon discovered she was a welfare cheat who drove a Cadillac to collect ill-gotten government checks. And that was just the beginning: Taylor, it turned out, was also a kidnapper, and possibly a murderer. A desperately ill teacher, a combat-traumatized Marine, an elderly woman hungry for companionship -- after Taylor came into their lives, all three ended up dead under suspicious circumstances. But nobody -- not the journalists who touted her story, not the police, and not presidential candidate Ronald Reagan -- seemed to care about anything but her welfare thievery. Growing up in the Jim Crow South, Taylor was made an outcast because of the color of her skin. As she rose to infamy, the press and politicians manipulated her image to demonize poor black women. Part social history, part true-crime investigation, Josh Levin's mesmerizing book, the product of six years of reporting and research, is a fascinating account of American racism, and an exposé of the "welfare queen" myth, one that fueled political debates that reverberate to this day. The Queen tells, for the first time, the fascinating story of what was done to Linda Taylor, what she did to others, and what was done in her name. "In the finest tradition of investigative reporting, Josh Levin exposes how a story that once shaped the nation's conscience was clouded by racism and lies. As he stunningly reveals in this "invaluable work of nonfiction," the deeper truth, the messy truth, tells us something much larger about who we are (David Grann, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon).
Before you can do what’s right, you have to see what’s right. When it comes to racial reconciliation, we often ask, “Where do we go from here?” But has it ever occurred to you that the real question is “Why are we still here?” In other words, until we’ve seen the problem of racism correctly—its history, its current effects, and its root causes—we aren’t equipped to head in the right direction. We’ll just keep falling into the same old patterns. The blind will lead the blind, and no one will have the vision to foster real change. But take hope! Restoring our spiritual sight is exactly what Jesus came to achieve. In this book, Josh Clemons and Hazen Stevens—one white, one black, and both brothers in Christ—will invite you to start the journey toward racial reconciliation and justice. Join us as we: Know the story of racism in the West, the church’s complicity in it, and how that story impacts each of us Own our own contributory roles in the present and historic sin of racism Change the story by getting involved with the laborious—yet glorious!—work of racial reconciliation and justice In Know. Own. Change., the authors set aside the world’s patterns of division and hate. Instead, they set a tone that emerges from spiritual kinship in Christ. Every page seeks to honor Him, pointing believers back to Jesus as the one who is reconciling all things to himself.
Why I Hate the Yankees offers a humorous take on the most beloved--and at the same time, most reviled--franchise in American professional sports. The book attempts to answer the question: Do we hate the Yankees merely because they always win, or is there more to it than just that? The authors deconstruct the origins of the so-called Yankee mystique, offer countless examples of Yankee arrogance, and critique the Yankees' easy-way-out business model whereby they merely outspend other teams for talent. The authors leave no one exempt from blame, parodying the Yankees' fans, players, and overbearing owner, and questioning the motives of the national media and Major League Baseball. The tongue-in-cheek narrative is interspersed with revealing quotes from Yankee players, fans, media members, and other writers. A must-read for any hater--or lover--of the Yankees.
What is the significance of noise in modernist music and literature? When Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring premiered in Paris in 1913, the crowd rioted in response to the harsh dissonance and jarring rhythms of its score. This was noise, not music. In Sublime Noise, Josh Epstein examines the significance of noise in modernist music and literature. How—and why—did composers and writers incorporate the noises of modern industry, warfare, and big-city life into their work? Epstein argues that, as the creative class engaged with the racket of cityscapes and new media, they reconsidered not just the aesthetic of music but also its cultural effects. Noise, after all, is more than a sonic category: it is a cultural value judgment—a way of abating and categorizing the sounds of a social space or of new music. Pulled into dialogue with modern music’s innovative rhythms, noise signaled the breakdown of art’s autonomy from social life—even the “old favorites” of Beethoven and Wagner took on new cultural meanings when circulated in noisy modern contexts. The use of noise also opened up the closed space of art to the pressures of publicity and technological mediation. Building both on literary cultural studies and work in the “new musicology,” Sublime Noise examines the rich material relationship that exists between music and literature. Through close readings of modernist authors, including James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Edith Sitwell, E. M. Forster, and Ezra Pound, and composers, including George Antheil, William Walton, Erik Satie, and Benjamin Britten, Epstein offers a radically contemporary account of musical-literary interactions that goes well beyond pure formalism. This book will be of interest to scholars of Anglophone literary modernism and to musicologists interested in how music was given new literary and cultural meaning during that complex interdisciplinary period.
When Finn and Jake decide to covertly follow Lumpy Space Princess and Tree Trunks on their treasure hunt, they realize that LSP knows more about this treasure than she is letting on.
Destinations is a helpful, insightful collection of columns from Chicago Tribune travel writer Josh Noel, covering a wide range of expertly curated getaways. Focusing mostly on US locations, but with beautiful international locales sprinkled in, Noel gives a critical and off-the-beaten path view of an eclectic group of vacation spots. Noel offers useful recommendations on weekend jaunts and week-long excursions, mixing in both affordable and ultra-luxurious options, including spas, skiing, Sundance, and the French Riviera. With options like microbrewery tours in Colorado and a Tibetan cultural center in Indiana, Noel uncovers what the average travel guide misses. Additionally, each article includes tips on hotels, restaurants, and travel arrangements. Whether readers are looking for a pleasant nature walk, rugged camping trip, or a city's top under-the-radar hotspots, Destinations is the perfect interactive travel guide.
For over 1000 years, Celts rule Europe. The most revered are the Druids: bards, healers, judges, and seers. A special few protect the secrets of ancient Earth magic, including a healer from Iberia, and a seer from Belgica. Rhonwen, the healer, keeps the Druidic culture and practises alive in a land ravaged by a Roman civil war. Sworn by her Mother to a blood oath of vengeance, she must choose between fulfilling the promise or following her own heart`s path. Mallec, the seer, is sent from his warrior tribe to the center of druidic learning to become a scholar. His training does not prepare him for an unexpected discovery of an ancient rite for immortality. Once mastered, Mallec must protect the knowledge from those who thirst for its power and are bent on his destruction. Seemingly separate paths, entwined by dreams and destiny, the DRUIDS saga unfolds.
History is written by victors, but the vanquished also have a powerful tale to tell. In 57 BC the Druidic men and women of ancient Gaul banded together to battle against Julius Caesar’s campaign to rule the world. Though the Gauls also faced hostile and bloody conflicts within their own tribes, they worked together to fight against the Roman invasion. Remarkably, though war was an integral part of their everyday life, they found ways to celebrate their Druidic traditions and act on their most tender passions for life.
Part Two of the trilogy (Druids, Captives, Warriors) Cast into slavery, two Druids must escape and protect an ancient magic from one who would abuse it. As the spiritual heart of his clan, seer Druid Mallec is trusted and adored by all around him. Continuing to wonder at his past visions of a dark haired woman, his attentions shift to a series of calamities overtaking his people. Mallec struggles to understand why they have lost their gods favour, unaware of the untimely resurrection of the evil Driad Dierdre, and her plans for his ultimate downfall. Meanwhile, healer Driad Rhonwen, Mallec’s dark haired vision, remains in slavery passing from bad master to worse. Repeatedly punished for her resistant nature, but kept alive for her healing skills, Rhonwen survives, unaware of her intertwined fate with Mallec and the betrayal that will soon cast him into chains.
A dynamic look at the world-famous basketball wizards who have been mesmerizing fans since the 1920s. Includes 50 photos from every era of the team's fascinating history.
The richest volume ever compiled on the subject, this lavishly illustrated tribute to a century of baseball's Fall Classic features anecdotes, lore, historic photos-and all of the stats fans cherish. Newly revised and fully updated through the 2002 season, THE WORLD SERIES combines lively discussion with thorough statistics to tell the story of every World Series ever played, from the 1903 battle between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Detroit Tigers to the Subway Series of 2000 that pitted the Yankees against the Mets as well as the eagerly awaited battle for the pennant in October 2002. The author's historical research uncovers all the little-known facts and stories from each game, along with baseball legends and unforgettable moments. In addition, detailed box scores and line scores include the statistics that baseball fans covet, with every number for every player who ever appeared in a World Series game. Beautiful photographs bring every game to life, illustrating the evolution of the game.
Part Two of the trilogy (Druids, Captives, Warriors) Cast into slavery, two Druids must escape and protect an ancient magic from one who would abuse it. As the spiritual heart of his clan, seer Druid Mallec is trusted and adored by all around him. Continuing to wonder at his past visions of a dark haired woman, his attentions shift to a series of calamities overtaking his people. Mallec struggles to understand why they have lost their gods favour, unaware of the untimely resurrection of the evil Driad Dierdre, and her plans for his ultimate downfall. Meanwhile, healer Driad Rhonwen, Mallec’s dark haired vision, remains in slavery passing from bad master to worse. Repeatedly punished for her resistant nature, but kept alive for her healing skills, Rhonwen survives, unaware of her intertwined fate with Mallec and the betrayal that will soon cast him into chains.
Physicist Raines Kerr and his daughter, Leah, risk everything to travel back in time from the British-ruled United States of 2012 to 1780 Colonial America, find George Washington, stop a traitor, and change history.
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