In this first full-length study of Henry Cowell, Michael Hicks shows how the maverick composer, writer, teacher, and performer built his career on the intellectual and aesthetic foundations of his parents, community, and teachers-and exemplified the essence of bohemian California. Author of the highly influential New Musical Resources and a ......
This is the first paperback edition of the only biography of Louis Prima, one of the most underrated jazz musicians and entertainers of the twentieth century. In a career that spanned four decades, Prima infused the grit and grace of Dixieland jazz with swing and big band sounds, the first whiffs of rock 'n' roll, and a vaudevillian-like stage ......
My Lord, What a Morning is a gentle and engrossing memoir, abounding with the tender and inspiring stories of Marian Anderson's life in her own modest words. From her humble but proud beginnings in south Philadelphia to international vocal renown, the legendary contralto writes of triumph and adversity, of being grounded in faith and surrounded ......
In this fast-paced, captivating account of Billy Sunday's life, Roger A. Bruns masterfully unfolds the story of modern evangelism. Born in Iowa during the Civil War, Sunday rose to fame as the ''fastest man in baseball'' during his career with the Chicago White Stockings in the 1880s. But he turned his back on the game when he heard the call of ......
The first - -a powerful, majestic contralto spanning four octaves -catapulted her from Philadelphia poverty to international fame. A second, softer voice emanated from her mere presence: an unwavering refrain of opportunity and accomplishment in the face of racial prejudice. Anderson was born in 1897 to parents who made the long journey north from ......
In this trenchant work, James Barrett traces the political journey of a leading worker radical whose life and experiences encapsulate radicalism's rise and fall in the United States. A self-educated wage earner raised in the slums of a large industrial city, William Z. Foster became a brilliant union organizer who helped build the American ......
Richard James Oglesby is best known for introducing the rail-splitter image into Abraham Lincoln's successful presidential campaign of 1860, and in many ways his career ran parallel to Honest Abe's. This biography of the three-time governor of Illinois offers the first detailed view of a key figure in the great changes that swept Illinois and the ......
Winner of the Carr P. Collins Award and the Miss Ima Hogg Historical Achievement Award, Last Cavalier is the never-before-told story of the remarkable life and career of John A. Lomax, pioneering American folklorist, canny businessman, influential educator, and patriarch of an extended family of artists, performers, and scholars.
Brilliant and bedraggled, the picaresque Jewish philosopher Solomon Maimon was one of the great thinkers of the eighteenth century. Now the definitive English version of Maimon's remarkable Autobiography, the 1888 translation by J. Clark Murray, is available for the first time in paperback, enhanced with a new introduction by Jewish studies ......
