Yet, like its pop cultural peers punk and hip hop, it was born of a period of profound social and economic upheaval. In "Turn the Beat Around," critic and journalist Peter Shapiro traces the history of disco music and culture. From the outset, disco was essentially a shotgun marriage between a newly out and proud gay sexuality and the first generation of post-civil rights African Americans, all to the serenade of the recently developed synthesizer. Shapiro maps out these converging influences, as well as disco's cultural antecedents in Europe, looks at the history of DJing, explores the mainstream disco craze at it's apex, and details the long shadow cast by disco's performers and devotees on today's musical landscape. One part cultural study, one part urban history, and one part glitter-pop confection, "Turn the Beat Around" is the most comprehensive study of the Me Generation to date.

    He was a giant of the saxophone and a major composer. His music influenced both rock stars and classical musicians. There was a mystical quality, a profound melancholy emanating from this quiet, self-contained man that moved listeners--some of whom knew little about music but heard something beyond music's boundaries in the sounds his saxophone created. J. C. Thomas traces John Coltrane's life and career from his North Carolina childhood through his apprenticeship with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Miles Davis, to its culmination in the saxophonist's classic quartet that played to steadily increasing audiences throughout America, Europe, and Japan.The author has drawn on the recollections of the people who knew Coltrane best--boyhood friends, band members like Elvin Jones, spiritual mentors like Ravi Shankar, and the women who loved him." Chasin' the Trane" is the story of a man who struggled against drug addiction, studied African and Eastern music and philosophy, admired both Einstein's expanding universe and the shimmering sounds a harp makes, and left behind the enduring legacy of a master musician who was also a beautiful man.

    Black soldiers believed their participation in the fight to make the world safe for democracy finally earned them rights they had been promised since the close of the Civil War.Instead, an unprecedented wave of anti-black riots and lynchings swept the country for eight months. From April to November of 1919, the racial unrest rolled across the South into the North and the Midwest, even to the nation's capital. Millions of lives were disrupted, and hundreds of lives were lost. Blacks responded by fighting back with an intensity and determination never seen before. Red Summer is the first narrative history written about this epic encounter. Focusing on the worst riots and lynchings—including those in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Charleston, Omaha and Knoxville—Cameron McWhirter chronicles the mayhem, while also exploring the first stirrings of a civil rights movement that would transform American society forty years later.

    She struck a chord with bluesy jazz ballads like "Put a Little Sugar in My Bowl" and powerful protest songs such as "Mississippi Goddam" and "To Be Young, Gifted, and Black," the anthem of the American Civil Rights movement.Here are the many lives and loves of Nina Simone, recounted in her unshakable voice.

    Packed with stories, biographical essays, scores of archival photographs and other evocative artifacts, it is an important contribution to sports history and a wonderful tribute to the players and teams who wrote a unique chapter in the annals of baseball and American culture. National Geographic is proud to present this compelling volume, compiled by a who's who of authorities on the subject. Drawing on years of research, Shades of Glory traces the history of black baseball from the 19th century to the first great teams, such as the Cuban Giants, and on to the era of the vibrant barnstorming teams from the East Coast, Chicago, and Cuba. The unparalleled Rube Foster started the first Negro League in 1920, with such dominant teams as the Chicago American Giants and the Kansas City Monarchs. Pittsburgh soon produced two of the greatest teams of all time, the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords, featuring such stars as Satchel Paige, John Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, and many more. Their superb brand of baseball rivaled the best of the major leagues until the historic signing of Jackie Robinson by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Shades of Glory chronicles a bygone era of black baseball and the stars who were shadowed by racial prejudice, but now shine forth in all their sparkling brilliance.

    The pages give life to the o beat artists, gonzo filmmakers, punk musicians, and rock-and-roll drag queens who created change, and while some aren’t well known, others like Patti Smith, Andy Warhol, and Debbie Harry did become icons. Ambitious in scope and scale, the book is largely fueled by the actual voices of many of the pivotal characters who broke down the entrenched cultural divisions between high and low, gay and straight, and art and commerce—and whose impact is still largely felt today.

    He tells the captivating story of how slaves and the children of slaves used this music to affirm their essential humanity in the face of oppression. The blues are shown to be a "this-worldly" expression of cultural and political rebellion. The spirituals tell about the "attempt to carve out a significant existence in a very trying situation."

    Weatherman was a fringe group most of whose ideas were rejected by the dominant culture. But unfortunately their views on race were not. In succeeding decades the idea of "white skin privilege" became the new default position for racial crusaders and race hustlers alike who believed that white skin privilege was alive and well in our society -- not because white Americans were actively racist, but because they enjoyed the invisible privileges and prerogatives that go along with their skin color. In this searing pamphlet on the racial realities of contemporary America, David Horowitz and John Perazzo show that in fact the most insidious bias in our culture today is black skin privilege. Black skin privilege means the press will fail to report an epidemic of race riots targeting whites for beatings, shooting and other violence in major American cities over the last several years. Black skin privilege means that whites -- as in the case of the Duke lacrosse players -- will be presumed guilty of racial crimes when they are clearly innocent and then never accorded an apology by those who have stigmatized them. Black skin privilege has created an optical illusion in the liberal culture that white on black attacks are commonplace events when in fact there are five times as many black attacks on whites as the reverse. (As Horowitz and Perazzo note, in 2010, blacks committed more than 25 times the number of acts of interracial violence than whites did.) Black skin privilege exists in the affirmative action programs of our system of higher education and in our culture, where a black racist like Al Sharpton could be regarded by the national media as a civil rights leader and then hired as a TV anchor by NBC. This pamphlet gives the statistics and hard numbers the mainstream media conceal. It also probes the double standards and double talk that has come to dominate the way America talks when it talks about race.

    The Funniest Text Message Autocorrects, Wrong Numbers & Mishaps on Smartphones!

    Music for Silenced Voices looks at Shostakovich through the back door, as it were, of his fifteen quartets, the works which his widow characterized as a "diary, the story of his soul." The silences and the voices were of many kinds, including the political silencing of adventurous writers, artists, and musicians during the Stalin era; the lost voices of Shostakovich's operas (a form he abandoned just before turning to string quartets); and the death-silenced voices of his close friends, to whom he dedicated many of these chamber works.Wendy Lesser has constructed a fascinating narrative in which the fifteen quartets, considered one at a time in chronological order, lead the reader through the personal, political, and professional events that shaped Shostakovich's singular, emblematic twentieth-century life. Weaving together interviews with the composer's friends, family, and colleagues, as well as conversations with present-day musicians who have played the quartets, Lesser sheds new light on the man and the musician. One of the very few books about Shostakovich that is aimed at a general rather than an academic audience, Music for Silenced Voices is a pleasure to read; at the same time, it is rigorously faithful to the known facts in this notoriously complicated life. It will fill readers with the desire to hear the quartets, which are among the most compelling and emotionally powerful monuments of the past century's music.

    Traveling from the Natchez Trace to the yawning cotton fields of the Delta and from plantation houses to air-conditioned shopping malls, Walton challenged us to see Mississippi's memories of comfort alongside its legacies of slavery and the Klan.  He weaves in the stories of his family, as well as those of patricians and sharecroppers, redneck demagogues and martyred civil rights workers, novelists and bluesmen, black and white. Mississippi is a national saga in brilliant microcosm, splendidly written and profoundly moving.

    In February a raid on tenements across New York leads to the arrest of 21 Black Panther party members and one of the most controversial trials of the era. In the summer Harlem plays host to Black Woodstock and concerts starring Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder and Nina Simone. The world’s most famous guitarist, Jimi Hendrix, a major supporter of the Black Panthers, returns to Harlem in support of their cause.By the end of the year Harlem is gripped by a heroin pandemic and the death of a 12-year-old child sends shockwaves through the USA, leaving Harlem stigmatised as an area ravaged by crime, gangsters and a darkly vengeful drug problem.

    Have you ever wished you could play the piano? Well, now you can! Scott "The Piano Guy" Houston teaches you to play the way the pros play, in a style enormously simpler than traditional classical piano and with an absolute minimum of note-reading. By focusing on playing the melody with the right hand (one note at a time) and simple chords with the left hand, Houston gives you the tools you need for a lifetime of musical enjoyment. Best of all, your tour guide to this adventure forces you to have fun along the way!

    Lynn Harris "...a sympathetic look at the most popular soul singer of his generation" - New York Daily News On July 1, 2005, the world lost one of the greatest R&B vocalists of all time, Luther Vandross. He left a legacy of some of the most enduring love songs of our age: “Here and Now,” “Superstar,” “If Only For One Night,” and “A House Is Not A Home.” The notoriously secretive star also left behind many questions such as the real-life inspiration behind all of those yearning love songs. The newly updated and expanded edition of Luther: The Life and Longing of Luther Vandross takes you deep inside the singer’s private world. It chronicles his underdog journey from the projects of New York City’s Lower East Side to the top of the charts, selling more than 20 million albums along the way. The book details Luther’s triumphs, as well as his struggles: his battle with weight; his feuds with Aretha Franklin, Anita Baker, and En Vogue; the 1986 car accident that killed his best friend and nearly destroyed his career; and the rumors about his sexuality that followed him throughout his life. The book offers specific new details about Luther’s love life that will help illuminate the private pain of the man who brought the world so much joy.

    The attacks have come not only from traditional conservatives but increasingly from the postmodern left. In this essay, Stephen Hicks presents and dissects the philosophical arguments made by the postmoderns for speech restrictions and responds with a vigorous and updated liberal case for free speech.