Cultural Literature

Guitarist Michael Bloomfield shot to stardom in the '60s with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Bob Dylan, the Electric Flag and on Al Kooper's Super Session. His story is told in the words of his brother, musicians such as B.B. King, producer Paul...

Nearly 100 years after bursting onto Chicago's music scene under the tutelage of Joe King Oliver, Louis Armstrong is recognized as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. A trumpet virtuoso, seductive crooner, and consummate...

(Jazz Play Along). For use with all Bb, Eb, C and bass clef instruments, the Jazz Play-Along Series is the ultimate learning tool for all jazz musicians. With musician-friendly lead sheets, melody cues and other split-track choices on the included CD,...

Legendary multi-instrumentalist/composer Benny Carter has granted us the impressive honor of compiling a remarkable play-along of his favorite works. Mr. Carter's fine harmonic awareness and keen melodic ear combine for unforgettable jazz compositions...

In the age of decentralization, instant communications, and the subordination of locality to the demands of a globalizing market, contemporary cities have taken on place-less or a-geographic characters. They have become phantasmagorical landscapes...

Marcus Garvey, Claude McKay, Claudia Jones, C.L.R. James, Stokely Carmichael, Louis Farakhan--the roster of immigrants from the Caribbean who have made a profound impact on the development of radical politics in the United States is extensive. In this...

The poet and founder of the music collective Flowers for the Living pays tribute to all Black women by focusing on visionaries and leaders who are making history right now, including Ava DuVernay, Janelle Monae, Kamala Harris, Misty Copeland, Nikole...

Only Ernest Withers, a key figure in the civil rights movement, could have delivered such iconic photographs--and the kind of information the FBI wanted . . . Renowned photographer Ernest Withers captured some of the most stunning moments of the civil...

The violence that has ravaged Algeria has often defied explanation. Regularly invoked in debates about political Islam, transitions to democracy, globalization, and the right of humanitarian interference, Algeria's tragedy has been reduced to a clash of...

The controversial thesis at the center of this study is that, despite the importance of slavery in Athenian society, the most distinctive characteristic of Athenian democracy was the unprecedented prominence it gave to free labor. Wood argues that the...

The Blindside meets Friday Night Lights in Keanon Lowe's Hometown Victory when an NFL coach returns home after losing a friend to opiods to coach a team of struggling high school kids on a 23-game losing streak. Keanon Lowe was working as an offensive...

Melancholic and introspective, ironical and apolitical, the urban cynic is a myth of our time. A casualty of modernization? Or a product of postmodernism? In this original and provocative book, Timothy Bewes undertakes a descent into the modern cynical...

Brother Mambo is a memoir of an anthropology graduate student who set out to document African cultural influences in the Guianas of South America. His initial study plan blocked by local immigration officials, he followed a hummingbird and other oracles...

A memoir about one man's journey to connect with his musician father, ultimately re-drawing the lines that define family and race. Throughout his adult life, whether he was opening a Seattle record store in the '90s or touring the world as the only...