Book picks similar to
Sound System: The Political Power of Music by Dave Randall
music
politics
nonfiction
non-fiction
Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music That Made a Nation
Jon Meacham - 2019
Meacham writes a celebration of the history and songs of the eras, and McGraw reflects on these songs as an artist and performer. Beginning with the battle hymns of the Revolution, and taking us through songs from the defining events of the Civil War, the two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, into the twenty-first century, Meacham and McGraw explore the songs that defined generations and the cultural and political climates that made them. The songs of America remind us where we've been, who we are—and what we can be.
Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Fredric Jameson - 1991
Jameson’s inquiry looks at the postmodern across a wide landscape, from “high” art to “low” from market ideology to architecture, from painting to “punk” film, from video art to literature.
Becoming Jefferson's People: Re-Inventing the American Republic in the Twenty-First Century
Clay S. Jenkinson - 2005
Pragmatic utopian and practical visionary, Jefferson was one of the most creative men who ever lived. He penned the thirty-five most revolutionary words in the history of the English language: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." Humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson has written a bold call for a Jeffersonian renewal in America. "We need the Sage of Monticello's vision as we begin what is the most difficult periods of American history." The Jeffersonian consists of self-reliance, an uncompromising dedication to liberty (over security, profit, comfort, and tradition), an unambiguous wall of seperation between church and state, first-rate public education, thoughtfulness and diffidence about America's place in the world, and a commitment to civility. Jefferson brought genius (not to mention reason, good sense, and idealism) to whatever he undertook, and he believed that the purpose of America was not to seek glory and profit in the world's arena, but to build a nation of equality, justice, and cultural achievement. Becoming Jefferson's People is part manifesto, part call for a new political persuasion in the United States, part self-help book, and part critique of the consumerist world empire that the United States has become at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Landscapes of Communism: A History Through Buildings
Owen Hatherley - 2015
Ransacking the urban planning of the grand imperial past, it set out to transform everyday life, its sweeping boulevards, epic high-rise and vast housing estates an emphatic declaration of a non-capitalist idea. Now, the regimes that built them are dead and long gone, but from Warsaw to Berlin, Moscow to post-Revolution Kiev, the buildings, their most obvious legacy, remain, populated by people whose lives were scattered and jeopardized by the collapse of communism and the introduction of capitalism.Landscapes of Communism is an intimate history of twentieth-century communist Europe told through its buildings; it is, too, a book about power, and what power does in cities. In exploring what that power was, Hatherley shows how much we can understand from surfaces - especially states as obsessed with surface as the Soviets were. Walking through these landscapes today, Hatherley discovers how, in contrast to the common dismissal of 'monolithic' Soviet architecture, these cities reflect with disconcerting transparency the development of an idea over the decades, with its sharp, sudden zigzags of official style: from modernism to classicism and back; to the superstitious despotic rococo of high Stalinism, with its jingoistic memorials, palaces and secret policemen's castles; East Germany's obsession with prefabricated concrete panels; and the metro systems of Moscow and Prague, a spectacular vindication of public space that went further than any avant garde ever dared.But most of all, Landscapes of Communism is a revelatory journey of discovery, plunging us into the maelstrom of socialist architecture. As we submerge into the metros, walk the massive, multi-lane magistrale and pause at milk bars in the microrayons, who knows what we might find?
Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer
Chris Salewicz - 2006
Indebted to rockabilly, reggae, Memphis soul, cowboy justice, and '60s protest, the overtly political band railed against war, racism, and a dead-end economy, and in the process imparted a conscience to punk. Their eponymous first record and" London Calling" still rank in Rolling Stone's top-ten best albums of all time, and in 2003 they were officially inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Joe Strummer was the Clash's front man, a rock-and-roll hero seen by many as the personification of outlaw integrity and street cool. The political heart of the Clash, Strummer synthesized gritty toughness and poetic sensitivity in a manner that still resonates with listeners, and his untimely death in December 2002 shook the world, further solidifying his iconic status. Music journalist Chris Salewicz was a friend to Strummer for close to three decades and has covered the Clash's career and the entire punk movement from its inception. With exclusive access to Strummer's friends, relatives, and fellow musicians, Salewicz penetrates the soul of an icon. He uses his vantage point to write the definitive biography of Strummer, charting his enormous worldwide success, his bleak years in the wilderness after the Clash's bitter breakup, and his triumphant return to stardom at the end of his life. In the process, Salewicz argues for Strummer's place in a long line of protest singers that includes Woody Guthrie, John Lennon, and Bob Marley, and examines by turns Strummer's and punk's ongoing cultural influence.
Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground
Michael Moynihan - 1998
The book focuses on the scene surrounding the extreme heavy metal subgenre black metal in Norway in the early 1990s, with a focus on the string of church burnings and murders that occurred in the country around 1993.
Cry Havoc
Simon Mann - 2011
On March 7, 2004, former SAS soldier and mercenary Simon Mann prepared to take off from Harare International Airport. His destination was Equatorial Guinea; his was intention to remove one of the most brutal dictators in Africa in a privately organized coup d'etat. The plot had the tacit approval of Western intelligence agencies and Mann had planned, overseen, and won two wars in Angola and Sierra Leone. So why did it go so wrong? Here he reveals the full involvement of Mark Thatcher in the coup d'etat, the endorsement of a former prime minister, and the financial involvement of two internationally famous members of the House of Lords. He also discusses how the British government approached him in the months preceding the Iraq War, to suggest ways in which a justified invasion of Iraq could be engineered. He also discusses the pain of telling his wife Amanda, who gave birth to their fourth child while he was incarcerated, that he believed he would never be freed.
How to Win Friends and Influence Enemies: Deliver Winning Conservative Arguments Against Mainstream Media
Will Witt - 2021
Most young people have never even heard of conservative values from someone their age, and if they do, the message is often bland and outdated. Almost every Hollywood actor, musician, media personality, and role model for young people in America rejects conservative values, and gen Zs and millennials are quick to regurgitate these viewpoints without developing their own opinions on issues. In How to Win Friends and Influence Enemies, political commentator and media personality Will Witt will give young conservatives the ammunition they need to fight back. So many young people in America want to stand up for their beliefs in their classrooms, at their jobs, with their friends, or on social media, but they don’t have the tools to do so. Will Witt arms Gen Zs and millennials with the knowledge and skills to combat the leftist narrative they hear every day.
The Cello Suites
Eric Siblin - 2009
There, something unlikely happened: he fell in love with a piece of classical music -- Bach's cello suites. Part biography, part music history, and part literary mystery, The Cello Suites weaves together three dramatic stories: The first features Johann Sebastian Bach and the missing manuscript of his suites from the eighteenth century; the second is that of Pablo Casals and his incredible discovery of the manuscript in Spain in the early twentieth century; and the third is Eric Siblin's own infatuation with the suites in the twenty-first century.This love affair leads Siblin to the back streets of Barcelona, a Belgian mansion, and a bombed out German palace; to interviews with cellists Mischa Maisky, Anner Bylsma, and Pieter Wispelwey; to archives, festivals, conferences, and cemeteries; and even to cello lessons -- all in pursuit of answers to the mysteries that continue to haunt this piece of music more than 250 years after its composer's death.The Cello Suites is an incomparable, beautifully written, true-life journey of passion, imagination, and discovery, fuelled by the transcendent power of a musical masterpiece.
Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture
Stephen Duncombe - 1997
In this multifarious underground, Pynchonesque misfits rant and rave, fans eulogize, hobbyists obsess. Together they form a low-tech publishing network of extraordinary richness and variety. Welcome to the realm of zines.In this, the first comprehensive study of zine publishing, Stephen Duncombe describes their origins in early-twentieth-century science fiction cults, their more proximate roots in 60s counter-culture and their rapid proliferation in the wake of punk rock. While Notes from Underground pays full due to the political importance of zines as a vital web of popular culture, it also notes the shortcomings of their utopian and escapist outlook in achieving fundamental social change. Duncombe’s book raises the larger questionof whether it is possible to rebel culturally within a consumer society that eats up cultural rebellion.Packed with extracts and illustrations from a wide array of publications, past and present, Notes from Underground is the first book to explore the full range of zine culture and provides a definitive portrait of the contemporary underground in all its splendor and misery.
Karl Marx: His Life and Environment
Isaiah Berlin - 1939
It provides a penetrating, lucid, and comprehensive introduction to Marx as theorist of the socialist revolution, illuminating his personality and ideas, and concentrating on those which have historically formed the central core of Marxism as a theory and practice. Berlin goes on to present an account of Marx's life as one of the most influential and incendiary social philosophers of the twentieth century and depicts the social and political atmosphere in which Marx wrote. This edition includes a new introduction by Alan Ryan which traces the place of Berlin's Marx from its pre-World War II publication to the present, and elucidates why Berlin's portrait, in the midst of voluminous writings about Marx, remains the classic account of the personal and political side of this monumental figure.
Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune
Kristin Ross - 2015
Today’s concerns—internationalism, education, the future of labor, the status of art, and ecological theory and practice—frame and inform her carefully researched restaging of the words and actions of individual Communards. This original analysis of an event and its centrifugal effects brings to life the workers in Paris who became revolutionaries, the significance they attributed to their struggle, and the elaboration and continuation of their thought in the encounters that transpired between the insurrection’s survivors and supporters like Marx, Kropotkin, and William Morris.The Paris Commune was a laboratory of political invention, important simply and above all for, as Marx reminds us, its own “working existence.” Communal Luxury allows readers to revisit the intricate workings of an extraordinary experiment.
TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone (New Autonomy)
Hakim Bey - 1991
Recipes for poetic terror, anarcho -black magic, post-situ psychotropic surgery, denunciations of spiritual addictions to vapid infotainment cults - this is the bastard classic, the watermark impressed upon our minds. Where conscience informs praxis, and action infects consciousness, T.A.Z. is beginning to worm its way into above-ground culture. This book offers inspired blasts of writing, from slogans to historical essays, on the need to insert revolutionary happiness into everyday life through poetic action, and celebrating the radical optimism present in outlaw cultures. It should appeal to alternative thinkers and punks everywhere, as it celebrates liberation, love and poetic living. The new edition contains the full text of Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism, the complete communiques and flyers of the Association fo Ontological Anarchy, the long essay 'The Temporary Autonomous Zone, ' and a new preface by the author
The Ego and Its Own
Max Stirner - 1844
The work also constitutes an enduring critique of liberalism and socialism from the perspective of an extreme eccentric individualism. Stirner has latterly been portrayed variously as a precursor of Nietzsche, a forerunner of existentialism, an individualist anarchist, and as manifestly insane. This edition includes an Introduction placing Stirner in his historical context.
Reform or Revolution
Rosa Luxemburg - 1898
Why capitalism cannot overcome its internal contradictions and the working class cannot "reform" away exploitation and economic crises.