This book is a 'home front' study of Ireland during the Crimean War, which analyses how the various strands of Irish society responded to the conflict's events, issues and impacts and how they memorialised it as part of the British Empire.
Featuring over 200 vintage photographs and a new introduction by the author, the engaging, informative volume brings to life the African American singers and players who created this rich genre of music as well as the settings and experiences that inspired them. The author deftly traces the evolution of the blues from the work songs of slaves, to acoustic country ballads, to urban sounds, to electric rhythm and blues bands. Oliver vividly re-creates the economic, social, and regional forces that shaped the unique blues tradition, and superbly details every facet of the music, including themes and subjects, techniques, and recording history.
Kenneth Waltz (1924–2013) is perhaps the most enduringly influential figure in international relations theory of the second half of the twentieth century. He is considered the father of the structural-realist or neorealist school, and his views on core questions, such as the causes of war and the structure of the international system, are foundational to the field today and likely will remain so for decades to come. Waltz’s writings on both theoretical and policy-related topics, from the balance of power to the spread of nuclear weapons, continue to fuel debate. This book is a groundbreaking intellectual biography of Kenneth Waltz, shedding new light on the development and significance of his key contributions. Paul R. Viotti draws on extensive, candid interviews with Waltz as well as Waltz’s personal files and archival research to provide a nuanced account of the great scholar’s life and thought. He traces the intellectual sources and personal experiences that shaped Waltz’s work, including an intense Lutheran upbringing; service in World War II and the Korean War; and the academic environments of Oberlin College, Columbia University, and the University of California, Berkeley. Viotti examines the key influences on Waltz’s major works, Man, the State, and War and Theory of International Politics, and analyzes their distinctive insights. Engaging with the views of Waltz’s critics and featuring reminiscences from his colleagues, this book is a compelling portrait of an intellectual titan.
For more than forty years...Paul Mooney has been provocative, incisive- and absolutely hilarious. His comedy has always been indisputably real and raw, reflecting race issues in America... As head writer for The Richard Pryor Show, he helped tear down racial barriers and change the course of comedy. He helped Robin Williams and Sarah Bernhard break into show business. He paved the way for superstars like Eddie Murphy. Few have witnessed as much comedy history as Mooney; even fewer could recount it with such riotous honesty and depth of insight"--from back cover.
A vision of architecture that includes sculpture, machines, and technology and encapsulates the history of the human species. According to Paul Shepheard, architecture is the rearranging of the world for human purposes. Sculpture, machines, and landscapes are all architecture-every bit as much as buildings are. In his writings, Shepheard examines old assumptions about architecture and replaces the critical theory of the academic with the active theory of the architect-citizen enamored of the world around him. Artificial Love weaves together three stories about architecture into one. The first, about machines as architecture, leads to speculations about technology and the human condition and to the assertion that machines are the sculptures of today. The second story is about the ways that architecture reflects the tribal and personal desires of those who make it. In the West, ideas of community, multiculturalism, and globalization compete furiously, leaving architecture to exist as it always has, as the past in the present. The third story features individual people experiencing their lives in the context of architecture. Here, Shepheard borrows the rhetorical device of Shakespeare's seven ages of man to propose that each person's life imitates the accumulating history of the human species. Shepheard's version of the history of humans is a technological one, in which machines become sculpture and sculpture becomes architecture. For Shepheard, our machines do not separate us from nature. Rather, our technology is our nature, and we cannot but be in harmony with nature. The change that we have wrought in the world, he says, is a wonderful and powerful thing.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A Washington Post Notable Book Excerpted in The New Yorker A work of unparalleled candor and splendorous beauty, The Lyrics celebrates the creative life and the musical genius of Paul McCartney through his most meaningful songs. Finally in paperback and featuring seven new song commentaries, the #1 New York Times bestseller celebrates the creative life and unparalleled musical genius of Paul McCartney. Spanning sixty-four years—from his early days in Liverpool, through the historic decade of The Beatles, to Wings and his solo career—Paul McCartney’s The Lyrics revolutionized the way artists write about music. An unprecedented “triumph” (Times UK), this handsomely designed volume pairs the definitive texts of over 160 songs with first-person commentaries on McCartney’s life, revealing the diverse circumstances in which songs were written; how they ultimately came to be; and the remarkable, yet often delightfully ordinary, people and places that inspired them. The Lyrics also includes: · A personal foreword by McCartney · An unprecedented range of songs, from beloved standards like “Band on the Run” to new additions “Day Tripper” and “Magical Mystery Tour” · Over 160 images from McCartney’s own archives Edited and introduced by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon, The Lyrics is the definitive literary and visual record of one of the greatest songwriters of all time.
This is an inquiry into the blues and the mind, a study of the blues as thought. The subconscious power of the blues is examined from a poetic and psychological perspective, illuminating the blues' deepest creative sources and exploring its far-reaching influence and appeal. Like Surrealist poetry in particular, blues communicate through highly charged symbols of aggression and desire--eros, crime, magic, night, and drugs, among others. An analysis of classic blues lyrics, along with source material from Freud and James Frazer, to Breton and Marcuse, conveys the blues' major poetic function of spiritual revolt against repression.
In Twilight of the Titans, Paul K. MacDonald and Joseph M. Parent examine great power transitions since 1870 to determine how declining powers choose to behave, identifying the strong incentives to moderate their behavior when the hierarchy of great powers is shifting. Challenging the conventional wisdom that such transitions push declining great powers to extreme measures, this book argues that intimidation, provocation, and preventive war are not the only alternatives to the loss of relative power and prestige. Using numerous case studies, MacDonald and Parent show how declining states tend to behave, the policy options they have, how rising states respond to those in decline, and what conditions reward particular strategic choices.
This eclectic, funny, and moving book tracks a life lived in music and words. Paul Quarrington ruminates on the bands of his childhood; his restless youth, spent playing bass with the cult band Joe Hall and the Continental Drift; and his incarnation, in middle age, as rhythm guitarist and singer with the band Porkbelly Futures. Ranging through rock ’n’ roll, the blues, folk, country and soul, he explores how songs are made, how they work, and why they affect us so deeply. This is also a book about friendship. In his imitably entertaining way, Quarrington recounts the adventures and vicissitudes he and his fellow band members share as they cope with everything from broken strings to broken marriages, making a last stab at that elusive thing called success.
A study of contemporary music in light of transformations to work and social life. The emergence of the popular music industry in the early twentieth century not only drove a wedge between music production and consumption, it also underscored a wider separation of labor from leisure and of the workplace from the domestic sphere. These were changes characteristic of an industrial society where pleasure was to be sought outside of work, but these categories have grown increasingly porous today. As the working day extends into the home or becomes indistinguishable from leisure time, so the role and meaning of music in everyday life changes too. In arguing that the experience of popular music is partly conditioned by its segregation from work and its restriction to the time and space of leisure—the evening, the weekend, the dancehall—Take This Hammer shows how changes to work as it grows increasingly precarious, part-time, and temporary in recent decades, are related to transformations in popular music. Connecting contemporary changes in work and the economy to tendencies in popular music, Take This Hammer shows how song-form has both reflected developments in contemporary capitalism while also intimating a horizon beyond it. From online streaming and the extension of the working day to gentrification, unemployment and the emergence of trap rap, from ecological crisis and field recording to automation and trends in dance music, by exploring the intersections of work and song in the current era, not only do we gain a new understanding of contemporary musical culture, we also see how music might gesture towards a horizon beyond the alienating experience of work in capitalism itself.
Broadcasting the Blues: Black Blues in the Segregation Era is based on Paul Oliver's award-winning radio broadcasts from the BBC that were created over several decades. It traces the social history of the blues in America, from its birth in the rural South through the heyday of sound recordings. Noted blues scholar Paul Oliver draws on decades of research and personal interviews with performers--some of whom he "discovered" and recorded for the first time--to draw a picture of how the blues aesthetic developed, giving new insights into the role blues played in American society before racial integration. The book begins by outlining the history of the blues from African music through country stomps, ragtime songs, and field hollers. From the heroic figures of black folksong--including the steel-driving railroad worker John Henry and the destructive Boll Weevil--to the content of the emerging blues, the author discusses the "meaning" behind the often coded words of the blues, evoking topics such as playful sexuality, magic and medicine, the stresses of segregation, and commentary on national events. Finally, the author traces the history of blues documentation, showing how our views of the early blues have been shaped through a complex interplay of social forces, and indicating possible lines for future research.
This book provides fresh insight into the creative practice developed by Paul McCartney over his extended career as a songwriter, record producer and performing musician. It frames its examination of McCartney’s work through the lens of the systems model of creativity developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and combines this with the research work of Pierre Bourdieu. This systems approach is built around the basic structures of idiosyncratic agents, like McCartney himself, and the choices he has made as a creative individual. It also locates his work within social fields and cultural domains, all crucial aspects of the creative system that McCartney continues to be immersed in. Using this tripartite system, the book includes analysis of McCartney’s creative collaborations with musicians, producers, artists and filmmakers and provides a critical analysis of the Romantic myth which forms a central tenet of popular music. This engaging work will have interdisciplinary appeal to students and scholars of the psychology of creativity, popular music, sociology and cultural studies.
Long John Baldry is considered the father of the '60s British blues movement. Drawing on intimate anecdotes from Baldry's legendary friends, lovers, and peers, author Paul Myers uncovers the man behind the mythic persona. An entire generation of British rock legends flourished under Baldry's tutelage, and It Ain't Easy features exclusive personal recollections from artists such as Sir Elton John, Rod Stewart, Eric Clapton, Sir Paul McCartney, John Mayall, and Mick Fleetwood, as well as interviews with renowned music industry insiders like songwriter/producer Tony Macaulay, Yardbirds manager Giorgio Gomelsky, ex-Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, filmmaker Cameron Crowe, and others. Extensively researched, It Ain't Easy traces Baldry's extraordinary life from his birth during the London Blitz, to his discovery of black American music, to the sexual revolution, to the musical and social upheaval of the 1960s and '70s, and to his eventual happy retreat to the tranquility of Canada's Pacific Coast.
In the 1940s and '50s, Richard Dyer-Bennet (1913-1991) was among the best known and most respected folk singers in America. Paul O. Jenkins tells, for the first time, the story of Dyer-Bennet, often referred to as the "Twentieth-Century Minstrel." Dyer-Bennet's approach to singing sounded almost foreign to many American listeners. The folk artist followed a musical tradition in danger of dying out. The Swede Sven Scholander was the last European proponent of minstrelsy and served as Dyer-Bennet's inspiration after the young singer traveled to Stockholm to meet him one year before Scholander's death. Dyer-Bennet's achievements were many. Nine years after his meeting with Scholander, he became the first solo performer of his kind to appear in Carnegie Hall. This book argues Dyer-Bennet helped pave the way for the folk boom of the mid-1950s and early 1960s, finding his influence in the work of Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and many others. It also posits strong evidence that Dyer-Bennet would certainly be much better known today had his career not been interrupted midstream by the anticommunist, Red-scare blacklist and its ban on his performances. .
Written in side-splitting and often cringe-inducing detail, Paul Feig takes you in a time machine to a world of bombardment by dodge balls, ill-fated prom dates, hellish school bus rides, and other aspects of public school life that will keep you laughing in recognition and occasionally sighing in relief that you aren’t him. Kick Me is a nostalgic trip for the inner geek in all of us.
(Guitar Chord Songbook). Here are the essentials you need to play 43 favorites from this folk trio melody, lyrics, and guitar chord diagrams. Includes: And When I Die * Blowin' in the Wind * Children, Go Where I Send Thee * Don't Think Twice, It's All Right * Goodnight, Irene * I Dig Rock and Roll Music * If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song) * Leaving on a Jet Plane * Puff the Magic Dragon * This Land Is Your Land * The Times They Are A-Changin' * We Shall Overcome * Wedding Song (There Is Love) * Where Have All the Flowers Gone? * and more.
In this wonderfully engaging and informative collection we hear the voice of a different Paul Bowles. Writing on a wide range of subjects--jazz, film music, classical music, popular music, ethnic music--he is direct, opinionated, incisive, analytical, humorous, and passionate."—Millicent Dillon, author of You Are Not I: A Portrait of Paul Bowles
This volume gathers together and organizes in an easily accessible format all known information relevant to the life and work of the French jazz musician Django Reinhardt. Together with fellow musician, St ane Grappelli, Reinhardt became one of the twentieth century's most celebrated jazz artists with performances he gave as part of the Quintet of the Hot Club of France. Essentially discographical in format, this book updates the original work compiled by Charles Delauney in 1960, and draws on later work by Gould, Nevers, Royal and Rust, to detail all known recordings by Reinhardt, together with known film, radio and television appearances. For each entry Paul Vernon provides, where known, the location of the recording, the date, the artist credit as it appears on the label of the original issue, the performers and the instruments played by them, the matrix number, the exact timing of the recording and details of 78, LP, EP and CD issues. Interspersed at the appropriate chronological points are biographical details about Reinhardt and the political, social and cultural climate of his time. This is augmented with excerpts from reviews, letters and other documents to provide a vivid context for his recording work.
“corrupt and moronic though the common people are seemingly becoming ... only in the common people can the true work be rooted, the true tradition rediscovered and re-informed” Charles Parker, BBC Radio Producer 1959. In 1958, in his best-selling book Culture and Society, Raymond Williams identified working-class culture as ‘a key issue in our own time’. Why this happened and how this subject was thought about and acted upon is the focus of this book. Paul Long investigates a variety of projects and practices that were designed to describe, validate, reclaim, rejuvenate or generate ‘authentic’ working-class culture as part of the re-imagining of Britishness in the context of the post-war settlement. Detailed case studies cover the wartime cultural activities of CEMA – the forerunner of the Arts Council - the Folk Revival, the impact of Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy, broadcasting and the radio work of Charles Parker, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, the roots of modern arts festivals in Arnold Wesker’s Centre 42 project as well as the impact of progressive education on children’s writing and the politics of the English language. ‘Only in the Common People: The Aesthetics of Class in Post-War Britain’ examines the assumptions, idealism and prejudices behind these projects and the terms of class as ‘the preoccupation of a generation’. This approach offers a historicisation of the broader ideas and debates that informed the development of the New Left and British social history and cultural theory, offering an understanding of the rise of respect for ‘the common man’.
Max Harrison . . . surveys the whole history and development of jazz in a concise, well written and well illustrated . . . article together with an extensive bibliography.' —Richard D. C. Noble, Times Literary Supplement The chapters of this book are in roughly chronological sequence: Spirituals, Blues, Gospels, Ragtime, and Jazz. The first three are by Paul Oliver, whose New Grove entry on the Blues is widely regarded as the definitive brief history of the genre. He has revised and expanded it for this book publication and, in addition, has extended the coverage of his essays on Spirituals in The New Grove to discuss both black and white traditions. Similarly, Oliver has revised and recast his coverage of Gospel music, which has been considerably expanded. Max Harrison's long entry on Jazz, which has also been extended, draws together the separate strands of the book to discuss the concept of Jazz as a matrix of mutually influential folk and popular styles. William Bolcom's short and definitive article on Ragtime has been revised, and all the bibliographies have been updated to include new and important works.
Now updated with two new chapters and an extraordinary collection of photographs, this second edition of Paul Friedlander's Rock and Roll: A Social History is a smash hit. The social force of rock and roll music leaps off the page as Paul Friedlander provides impressive insights based on hits from Johnny B. Goode to Smells Like Teen Spirit and beyond. In this musical journey, Friedlander offers the melodious strains and hard-edged riffs of Elvis, the Beatles, The Who, Dylan, Clapton, Hendrix, Motown, the San Francisco Beat, Punk, New Wave, rap, metal, 90's grunge, plus file sharing, and much more. The book is written in a refreshing, captivating style that pulls the reader in, offering no less than a complete social and cultural history of rock and roll for students and general audiences alike. Friedlander writes, 'This book chronicles the first forty years of rock/pop music history. Picture the various musical styles as locations on a giant unfolding road map. As you open the map, you travel from place to place, stopping at each chapter to sample the artistry. Don't forget to dress your imagination appropriately for this trip, because each genre is affected by the societal topography and climate that surround it. Enjoy your trip. We promise it will be a good one!
What happens when a man, dazzled like most of us by hi-tech, happy to have his suits made by robots in New York, sets out to find the meaning of life? John-Paul Flintoff's improbable and very funny book charts a journey through call centres and allotments, rat-catching and Savile Row tailors, to some kind of enlightenment. It is also a book about a man who learns how to crochet - and how you might too. John-Paul Flintoff is a bit of a one-off: a man who embarks on a spiritual pilgrimage by outsourcing his life to Bangalore, then hooks up with Mormons and Buddhists (well, Richard Gere), on a quest for truth and fulfilment. His journey is like a twenty-first century Candide, learning that life's satisfactions, and some kind of response to the concerns of economic meltdown and climate change, lie in learning how to make things for oneself, and mending things that fall apart. Along the way, Flintoff paints pictures with Brit-art oddball Billy Childish, gets apprenticed in Savile Row, grows his own food and spins fibre from nettles. Daringly, he also turns his book over to his wife Harriet, who likes nothing better than a fancy spa and a shop at Liberty's. The results are comic, heartwarming and inspiring.
First published in 1999, the main part of this reference consists of an alphabetical listing of many hundreds of artists, with details on band personnel, instrumentation, location, titles performed, sources, and other relevant notes included in each listing.
Virtuosos in the 21st century are exploring ways to expand standard playing techniques in a climate expecting ever-higher levels of perfection, supported by technological advances such as extended-range guitars. This Element examines the development and current state of virtuosic rock guitar in terms of playing, technology, and culture.
Accolades freely and frequently lavished on Grand Coulee Dam and the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project included “The Biggest Thing on Earth!” “The Eighth Wonder of the World!” and “The Largest Reclamation Project Ever Undertaken!” They highlight a monumental construction effort that spanned the 1930s through the 1980s. Now, for the first time, the story of this gigantic undertaking is told in this definitive history. When completed, the eleven-million-cubic-yard monolith at Grand Coulee on the Columbia River in north central Washington became the largest single block of concrete ever laid and provided an abundance of electricity that helped win World War II. Still one of the world's largest energy-producing stations, it is at the heart of a dynamic power grid that supplies all of the western United States with energy. The product of a long struggle over how to irrigate the Columbia Basin, Grand Coulee Dam resulted from the visions of eastern Washington residents, people like Wenatchee editor Rufus Woods and members of the Spokane Chamber of Commerce, who saw the undertaking as a dynamic plan to bring prosperity to their region. Yet today the reclamation enterprise--more than half a century after construction began--stands only half finished. Its future depends on the nation's need for food and the willingness of the public to pay the rapidly spiraling economic and environmental costs associated with such large-scale irrigation plans. The fight for Grand Coulee Dam, and the story of its construction, is a vital and animated saga of people striving for dazzling goals and then working, often against both each other and nature, to build something spectacular. They accomplished their goal against the backdrop of the worst economic depression in the nation's history. The dam, and the extensive irrigation network it supports, stands today as a monument to their dreams and their labors.
A profusely illustrated, popularly-written volume with original comic art, FDR and the New Deal For Beginners will shed new light upon a story now regaining visibility thanks to the recent economic crisis and prominent reformer, President Obama, in the White House. The history of the precedent-making FDR administration through the bitter economic depression, with expansive programs empowering artists and working people, comes alive as the grandest social experiment in the history of American democracy. For the first time, the lives of the president, the first lady and the ordinary people of the time will be seen through an inventive comic narrative accompanying historic illustrations and a sympathetic but not uncritical text.
The first place-by-place chronology of U.S. history, this book offers the student, researcher, or traveller a handy guide to find all the most important events that have occurred at any locality in the United States.
Foul Play is divided into three parts: The first third deals with suspense, mystery, a death-defying illness, and a touching, soon to be aborted, love affair. All the characters in the story have auto-related names, which continues my trademark from my first book, Murder By Proxy, where all the characters were named after intoxicating beverages. The middle of the story tells us how the H.W.B. SOCIETY deals with the pain and suffering of the people who have been accidentally hit with a batted ball or an errant bat flying from a player's hands during major league ballgames. Sounds serious? Yes, it has its moments, but the chapters are also liberally sprinkled with my own special bend of sly humor. Can you imagine Amy Lamborghini, a tall sexy beauty, with a bat in her hands? Numerous conflicts arise in last part of the book, ending with unexpected resolutions and a heart-warming finale that is sure to bring tears to your eyes.
Edinburgh, 2030 - a independent, supposedly crime-free city with a year-round festival. No TV, private cars or popular music; sex sessions once a week. Blues-haunted private investigator Quint Dalrymple is called in to cast light on the murder of a guardswoman. Has the Ear, Nose and Throat Man returned, or is something much worse at the heart of the body politic?
This work devoted to federally funded arts programmes in the American Midwest, deals with the controversial Federal Theater Project (FTP) and the Federal Writers Project (FWP) under the New Deal's Works Progress Administration (WPA).
This book weaves the development of the medium of television with the story of a fascinating career, told by a man who both lived through the times and documented them. A wartime childhood, followed by national service in Egypt, led by chance to a career in broadcasting, spanning from no. 2 sound effects man on The Goon Show to setting up Channel Four. In between, the adrenalin of the days of live television were followed by a prolific decade producing programmes. This encompassed rubbing shoulders with the likes of the young Tom Stoppard and David Hockney, Dudley Moore and Peter Ustinov, as well as being sued for breaching the Vagrancy Act of 1838 and inadvertently missing an appointment with Prince Charles. On the way there were brushes with death, including nearly drowning aged three, being shot at by the Muslim Brotherhood and surviving a helicopter crash in California. Paul Bonner OBE rose through the ranks of the BBC to Head of Science & Features. He went on to take a leading role in the launch of Channel Four and was instrumental in the amalgamation of multiple ITV companies into a single entity. He is co-author of two volumes of Independent Television in Britain, published by Macmillan Press Ltd.
Universally recognized as one of the greatest blues artists, Memphis Minnie (1897–1973) wrote and recorded hundreds of songs. Blues people as diverse as Muddy Waters, Johnny Shines, Big Mama Thornton, and Chuck Berry have acknowledged her as a major influence. At a time when most female vocalists sang Tin Pan Alley material, Minnie wrote her own lyrics and accompanied her singing with virtuoso guitar playing. Thanks to her merciless imagination and dark humor, her songs rank among the most vigorous and challenging popular poetry in any language. Woman with Guitar is the first full-length study of the life and work of this extraordinary free spirit, focusing on the lively interplay between Minnie's evolving artistry and the African American community in which she lived and worked. Drawing on folklore, psychoanalysis, critical theory, women's studies, and surrealism, the authors' explorations of Minnie's songs illuminate the poetics of popular culture as well as the largely hidden history of working-class women's self-emancipation. This revised and expanded edition includes a wealth of new biographical material, including photographs, record contracts, sheet music, and period advertisements, which further vivify this portrait of an African American musical legend. Complete, updated discography included. "Woman with Guitar is a fascinating, thorough and extremely valuable biography of one of American musical history's most vibrant and pioneering artists. As the first woman singer/songwriter/ guitarist to ever reach stardom, the story of her life in music, on and off the stage, during one of the most important and formative periods of the origins of popular music, is an indelible, crucial window into that history."—Bonnie Raitt "Woman with Guitar has been, since it was first published in 1992 and now with this new revised and extended edition, still the only real definitive biography of Memphis Minnie, the most important female singer, songwriter and guitarist in the history of Delta blues."—Lucinda Williams "As a most ardent and devoted lifelong fan of Memphis Minnie and her music, I avidly devoured the original Woman with Guitar when it first came out in 1992. Now I am excited to be reading this new edition, and so grateful for it's additional rare photos and carefully researched details, which shed even more light on this seminal, iconic, almost mythical musical pioneer, who was way ahead of her time, and whose soulful music and life so deeply inspired and influenced so many! A must read — whether you are already a Memphis Minnie fan, or just discovering her for the first time!" — Maria Muldaur "An excellent book."—Bill Wyman "Woman with Guitar is not simply a carefully researched biography of Memphis Minnie, complied from the memories of her relatives, friends, and fellow performers; it is a vivid portrait of a talented singer and guitarist . . . The authors have added a new dimension to blues scholarship."—Paul Oliver, author of Blues Off the Record "Woman with Guitar is a delight. The book is both thorough and brilliant, a rare combination these days. . . . A fanatic interest in Minnie underpins and energizes this wonderful biography."—David Roediger, author of The Wages of Whiteness Paul Garon is a co-founder of Living Blues magazine and author of The Devil's Son-in-Law and Blues and the Poetic Spirit. Beth Garon is a painter and collagist. The Garons operate a rare-book business in Chicago, Illinois, and have been associated with the US surrealist movement for many years.
An exploration of the history, ambitions, and impact of the Nobel Prize in literature as it gained a central position in 20th-century global literary culture. Few scholars would deny that the Nobel Prize is the most prestigious literary award in the world. But what mechanisms made it possible for 18 Swedish intellectuals to become the world's most influential literary critics? Paul Tenngart argues that the Nobel Prize in literature has become a special kind of international canonization: exerted from a non-central, semi-peripheral position, the award sometimes confirms and reinforces hierarchical relations between literary languages and cultures, and sometimes disturbs established patterns of dominance and dependence. Drawing from a wide range of contemporary theories and methods, this multifaceted history of the Nobel Prize questions how the Swedish Academy has managed to keep the prize's global status through all the violent international crises of the last 120 years; how the selection of laureates shaped the idea of 'universal' literary values and defined literary quality across languages and cultures; and what impact the prize has had on the distribution and significance of particular works, literatures and languages. The Nobel Prize and the Formation of Contemporary World Literature explores the history and impact of the Nobel Prize in literature from the first award in 1901 through recent controversies involving Bob Dylan and #MeToo, arguing that the prize is a unique performative act that has been – and still is – central in our continual and collective construction of world literature.
Yonder Come the Blues combines three influential and much-quoted books: Savannah Syncopators; Blacks, Whites and Blues and Recording the Blues. Updated with additional essays, this 2001 volume discusses the crucial early development of the blues as a music of Blacks in the United States, explaining some of the most significant factors that shaped this music. Together, these three texts emphasise the significance of the African heritage, the mutuality of much white and black music and the role of recording in consolidating the blues, thus demonstrating the importance of these formative elements in its complex but combined socio-musical history. Redressing some of the misconceptions that persist in writing on African-American music, this book will be essential reading for all enthusiasts of blues, jazz and country music and will be important for students of African-American studies and music, popular music and popular culture.
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