"Everybody knows and loves the American Songbook. But it's a bit less widely understood that in about 1950, this stream of great songs more or less dried up. All of a sudden, what came over the radio wasn't Gershwin, Porter, and Berlin, but "Come on-a My House" and "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?" Elvis and rock and roll arrived a few years later, and at that point the game was truly up. What happened, and why? In The B Side, acclaimed cultural...

"Drawing on a vast amount of new material that has surfaced in the last decade, ... jazz writer John Szwed considers how [Holiday's] life inflected her art, her influences, her uncanny voice and rhythmic genius, a number of her signature songs, and her legacy"--Amazon.com.

"An illuminating deep dive into the making of Bruce Springsteen's most surprising album, Nebraska, revealing its pivotal role in Springsteen's career--from the New York Times bestselling author of Petty: The Biography. Without Nebraska, Bruce Springsteen might not be who he is today. The natural follow-up to Springsteen's hugely successful The River should have been the hit-packed album Born in the U.S.A, but instead, in 1982, he came out with Nebraska,...

Poised to become a classic of jazz literature, this book offers seventy-nine chapters illuminating the lives of virtually all the major figures in jazz history. From Louis Armstrong's renegade-style trumpet playing to Sarah Vaughan's operatic crooning, and from the swinging elegance of Duke Ellington to the pioneering experiments of Ornette Coleman, the author continually astonishes the reader with his unparalleled insight. Writing with the grace...

"For decades, Renata Adler's writing has upheld and defined the highest standards of investigative journalism. A staff writer at The New Yorker from 1963 to 2001, Adler has reported on civil rights from Selma, Alabama; on the war in Biafra, the Six-Day War, and the Vietnam War; on the Nixon impeachment inquiry and Congress. She has also written about cultural matters, films (as chief film critic for The New York Times), books, politics, and pop music....

"In this new book, we hear directly from the artist through the widest array of sources--letters, notes to himself, published articles, rough drafts, stories, and poetry--creating the most detailed picture available of Seeger as a musician, an activist, and a family man, in his own words and from his own perspective... The portrait that emerges is not a saint, not a martyr, but a flesh-and-blood man, struggling to understand his gift, his time, and...

The Life and Songs of Stephen Foster offers an engaging reassessment of the life, politics, and legacy of the misunderstood father of American music. Once revered the world over, Foster's plantation songs, like "Old Folks at Home" and "My Old Kentucky Home," fell from grace in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement due to their controversial lyrics. Foster embraced the minstrel tradition for a brief time, refining it and infusing his songs with sympathy...

This superb selection guide helps you provide the best in recreational & curriculum-based reading material for your patrons in grades 7-12. Combining the popular Best Books for Junior High Readers & Best Books for Senior High Readers into one updated new resource, Best Books for Young Adult Readers features more than 6,500 titles sure to stimulate teen readers & link literature with learning. Each entry provides: Recommendations from leading journals....