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Woody Guthrie, American Radical
Although Joe Klein's Woody Guthrie and Ed Cray's Ramblin' Man capture Woody Guthrie's freewheeling personality and his empathy for the poor and downtrodden, Kaufman is the first to portray in detail Guthrie's commitment to political radicalism, especially communism. Drawing on previously unseen letters, song lyrics, essays, and interviews with family and friends, Kaufman traces Guthrie's involvement in the workers' movement and his development of protest songs. He portrays Guthrie as a committed and flawed human immersed in political complexity and harrowing personal struggle. Since most of the stories in Kaufman's appreciative portrait will be familiar to readers interested in Guthrie, it is best for those who know little about the singer to read first his autobiography, Bound for Glory, or as a next read after American Radical.
Mapping Woody Guthrie
“I ain’t got no home, I’m just a-roamin’ round,” Woody Guthrie lamented in one of his most popular songs. A native of Oklahoma, he was still in his teens when he moved to Pampa, Texas, where he experienced the dust storms that would play such a crucial role in forming his identity and shaping his work. He later joined thousands of Americans who headed to California to escape the devastation of the Dust Bowl. There he entered the West Coast stronghold of the Popular Front, whose leftward influence on his thinking would continue after his move in 1940 to New York, where the American folk music renaissance began when Guthrie encountered Pete Seeger and Lead Belly. Guthrie kept moving ...
Antkind: A Novel
The hilarious debut novel from the Oscar®-winning screenwriter of Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Synecdoche, New York. ‘Riotously funny’ New York Times ‘Just as loopy and clever as his movies’ Washington Post
Woody Guthrie's Modern World Blues
Mention Woody Guthrie, and people who know the name are likely to think of the “Okie Bard,” dust storms behind him, riding a boxcar or walking a red-dirt road, a battered guitar strapped to his back. But unlock Guthrie from the confines of rural folk and Hollywood mythology, as Will Kaufman does here, and you’ll find an abstract painter and sculptor who wrote about atomic energy and Ingrid Bergman and developed advanced theories of dialectical materialism and human engineering—in short, a folk singer who was deeply engaged with the art, ideas, and issues of his time. Guthrie may have been born in the Oklahoma hills, but his most productive years were spent in the metropolitan centers...
The Comedian as Confidence Man
In this lively and fascinating analysis of humorists and their work, Will Kaufman breaks new ground with his irony fatigue theory. The Comedian as Confidence Man examines the humorist's internal conflict between the social critic who demands to be taken seriously and the comedian who never can be: the irony fatigue condition. Concentrating on eight American literary and performing comedians from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, this study explores the irony fatigue affect that seems to pervade the work of comedians—those particular social observers who are obliged to promise, "Only kidding, folks," even when they may not be; in G. B. Shaw's words, they must "put things in such a way as to make people who would otherwise hang them believe they are joking." If these social observers are obliged to become, in effect, confidence men, with irony as the satiric weapon that both attacks and diverts, then the implications are great for those social critics who above all wish to be heeded.
These Broken Stars
"One of the most intense, thrilling, and achingly beautiful stories I've ever read."--Marie Lu, New York Times best-selling author of the Legend trilogy The first in the New York Times bestselling author duo Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner's sweeping science fiction trilogy, These Broken Stars is a timeless love story about hope and survival in the face of unthinkable odds. It's a night like any other on board the Icarus. Then, catastrophe strikes: the massive luxury spaceliner is yanked out of hyperspace and plummets into the nearest planet. Lilac LaRoux and Tarver Merendsen are the only survivors. Lilac is the daughter of the richest man in the universe. Tarver comes from nothing, a young ...
Civil War in American Culture
The Civil War is an event of great cultural significance, impacting upon American literature, film, music, electronic media, the marketplace and public performance. This book takes an innovative approach to this great event in American history, exploring its cultural origins and enduring cultural legacy. It focuses upon the place of the Civil War across the broad sweep of American cultural forms and practices and reveals important links between historical events and contemporary culture.The first chapter introduces a discussion of ante-bellum culture and the part cultural forces played in the sectional crisis that exploded into full-blown war in 1861. Subsequent chapters focus on particular themes, appropriations, interpretations and manifestations of the War as they have appeared in American culture.
American Culture in the 1970s
The 1970s was one of the most culturally vibrant periods in American history. This book discusses the dominant cultural forms of the 1970s - fiction and poetry; television and drama; film and visual culture; popular music and style; public space and spectacle - and the decade's most influential practitioners and texts: from Toni Morrison to All in the Family, from Diane Arbus to Bruce Springsteen, from M.A.S.H. to Taxi Driver and from disco divas to Vietnam protesters. In response to those who consider the seventies the time of disco, polyester and narcissism, this book rewrites the critical engagement with one of America's most misunderstood decades.Key Features*Focused case studies featuring key texts and influential writers, artists, directors and musicians*Chronology of 1970s American Culture*Bibliographies for each chapter and a general bibliography on 1970s Culture*14 black-and-white illustrations
The Last Kings of Shanghai
"In vivid detail... examines the little-known history of two extraordinary dynasties."--The Boston Globe "Not just a brilliant, well-researched, and highly readable book about China's past, it also reveals the contingencies and ironic twists of fate in China's modern history."--LA Review of Books An epic, multigenerational story of two rival dynasties who flourished in Shanghai and Hong Kong as twentieth-century China surged into the modern era, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist The Sassoons and the Kadoories stood astride Chinese business and politics for more than one hundred seventy-five years, profiting from the Opium Wars; surviving Japanese occupation; courting Chiang Kai-shek...
