Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong


James W. Loewen - 1995
    Lies My Teacher Told Me won the American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship.James W. Loewen, a sociology professor and distinguished critic of history education, puts 12 popular textbooks under the microscope-and what he discovers will surprise you. In his opinion, every one of these texts fails to make its subject interesting or memorable. Worse still is the proliferation of blind patriotism, mindless optimism and misinformation filling the pages.From the truth about Christopher Columbus to the harsh reality of the Vietnam War, Loewen picks apart the lies we've been told. This audiobook, narrated by Brian Keeler (The Hurricane, "All My Children") will forever change your view of the past.

A History of Western Music


J. Peter Burkholder - 1960
    Peter Burkholder has meticulously revised and restructured the text to make it more accessible for today's students. This revision places a stronger emphasis on social and historical context and adds substantially expanded pedagogy and striking four-color design.

Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love


David Talbot - 2012
    Season of the Witch is the first book to fully capture the dark magic of San Francisco in this breathtaking period, when the city radically changed itself & then revolutionized the world. The cool gray city of love was the epicenter of the 60s cultural revolution. But by the early 70s, San Francisco’s ecstatic experiment came crashing down from its starry heights. The city was rocked by savage murder sprees, mysterious terror campaigns, political assassinations, street riots & finally a terrifying sexual epidemic. No other city endured so many calamities in such a short time span. Talbot goes deep into the riveting story of his city’s ascent, decline & heroic recovery. He draws intimate portraits of San Francisco’s legendary demons & saviors: Charles Manson, Patty Hearst & the Symbionese Liberation Army, Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin, Bill Graham, Herb Caen, the Cockettes, Harvey Milk, Jim Jones & the Peoples Temple, Joe Montana & the Super Bowl 49ers. He reveals how the city emerged from the trials of this period with a new brand of “San Francisco values,” including gay marriage, medical marijuana, immigration sanctuary, universal health care, recycling, renewable energy, consumer safety & a living wage mandate. Considered radical when they were first introduced, these ideas have become the bedrock of decent society in many parts of the country & exemplify the ways that the city now inspires a live-and-let-live tolerance, a shared sense of humanity & an openness to change. As a new generation of activists & dreamers seeks its own path to a more enlightened future, Season of the Witch—with its epic tale of the wild & bloody birth of San Francisco values—offers both inspiration & cautionary wisdom.

We're Desperate: The Punk Rock Photography of Jim Jocoy, SF/LA 1978-1980


Jim Jocoy - 2002
    It developed concurrently everywhere, and every region had it's own identity. But it was in San Francisco and L.A. where the most radical behavior in stateside punk rock style and attitude was exhibited. It was anti-hippie, anti-disco, anti-parent and anti-"nice". And it was shockingly new. These photos are ground zero of punk rock style—delirious innovation and a snarling takeover of youth culture still resonating more than 20 years hence.

The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination


Daniel J. Boorstin - 1992
    Boorstin explores the development of artistic innovation over 3,000 years. A hugely ambitious chronicle of the arts that Boorstin delivers with the scope that made his Discoverers a national bestseller.

Only Half There


Devin Townsend - 2016
    It traces his beginnings in British Columbia growing up hearing a wealth of music, continues through his rapid rise to professional status, touring and recording with Steve Vai and developing his career with Strapping Young Lad and Devin Townsend Project. More than just an honest and intimate autobiography though, Only Half There is also a brutally honest expression of his life as a working, touring and recording artist, a husband, father and bi-polar artist.

Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991


Michael Azerrad - 2001
    This sweeping chronicle of music, politics, drugs, fear, loathing, and faith has been recognized as an indie rock classic in its own right. Among the bands profiled: Mission of Burma, Butthole Surfers, The Minutemen, Sonic Youth, Black Flag, Big Black, Hüsker Dü, Fugazi, Minor Threat, Mudhoney, The Replacements, Beat Happening, and Dinosaur Jr.

Those Who Wander: America’s Lost Street Kids


Vivian Ho - 2019
    But they also shed light on a more complex issue. The killers were three drifters scrounging for a living among a burgeoning counterculture population. Soon this community of runaways and transients became vulnerable scapegoats of a modern witch hunt. The supposedly progressive residents of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, only two generations removed from the Summer of Love, now feared all of society’s outcasts as threats.In Those Who Wander, Vivian Ho delves deep into a rising subculture that’s changing the very fabric of her city and all of urban America. Moving beyond the disheartening statistics, she gives voices to these young people—victims of abuse, failed foster care, mental illness, and drug addiction. She also doesn’t ignore the threat they pose to themselves and to others as a dangerous dark side emerges. With alarming urgency, she asks what can be done to save the next generation of America’s vagabond youth.

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple


Jeff Guinn - 2017
    His congregation was racially integrated, and he was a much-lauded leader in the contemporary civil rights movement. Eventually, Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to northern California. He became involved in electoral politics, and soon was a prominent Bay Area leader.In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones’s life, from his extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing to the fraught decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America. Guinn provides stunning new details of the events leading to the fatal day in November, 1978 when more than nine hundred people died—including almost three hundred infants and children—after being ordered to swallow a cyanide-laced drink.Guinn examined thousands of pages of FBI files on the case, including material released during the course of his research. He traveled to Jones’s Indiana hometown, where he spoke to people never previously interviewed, and uncovered fresh information from Jonestown survivors. He even visited the Jonestown site with the same pilot who flew there the day that Congressman Leo Ryan was murdered on Jones’s orders. The Road to Jonestown is the definitive book about Jim Jones and the events that led to the tragedy at Jonestown.

I Swear I Was There


David Nolan - 2001
    David Nolan's 'I Swear I Was There' describes the early days of the Sex Pistols, their first gig at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1976 and the long-term effects of that first concert.

The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things


Barry Glassner - 1999
    He exposes the people and organizations that manipulate our perceptions and profit from our anxieties: politicians who win elections by heightening concerns about crime and drug use even as both are declining; advocacy groups that raise money by exaggerating the prevalence of particular diseases; TV news-magazines that monger a new scare every week to garner ratings.

In Search of the Lost Chord: 1967 and the Hippie Idea


Danny Goldberg - 2017
    However elusive this Lost Chord may be, Danny G. searches it out and nails it to the tree flesh. Eternity now! 1967 forever!" --Wavy Gravy"Danny Goldberg’s deeply personal and political history of 1967 and the hippie idea weaves together rollicking, rousing, wonderfully colorful and disparate narratives to remind us how the energies and aspirations of the counterculture were intertwined with protest and reform. There is a direct line from many of the events, movements, and people of 1967 to our times. Goldberg draws the line for us with mesmerizing storytelling, characters, and conversations."--Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation "Danny Goldberg has written a lively, well-researched, kaleidoscopic account--at once openhearted and levelheaded--of a spiritual, pharmacological, political, and musical supernova whose reverberations are still strongly felt a half-century later."--Hendrik Hertzberg"Danny Goldberg is probably one of the purest, most reasonable guides you could ask for to 1967."--Andrew Loog Oldham, author of Rolling Stoned "Hippie 101--a kaleidoscopic snapshot of the Big Bang fifty years ago, three parts social and musical history, one part personal memoir, a sweeping overview that also manages to be up close and personal. Bravo."--Joel Selvin, author of Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels, and the Inside Story of Rock's Darkest Day "Danny Goldberg has done something I would not have thought possible: with diligent research, sharp prose, a clear mind, and an open heart, he has rescued a period of history from the clichés that had previously defined it. I began this book thinking hippies ridiculous. I ended it with a far more complex view, and one that showed me how little I had known or understood--a truly impressive achievement."--Eric Alterman, author of The Cause: The Fight for American Liberalism from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama Danny Goldberg’s new book is a subjective history of 1967, the year he graduated from high school. It is, he writes in the introduction, “an attempt at trying to remember the culture that mesmerized me, to visit the places and conversations I was not cool enough to have been a part of.” It is also a refreshing and new analysis of the era; by looking at not only the political causes, but also the spiritual, musical, and psychedelic movements, Goldberg provides a unique perspective on how and why the legacy of 1967 lives on today.1967 was the year of the release of the Beatles’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and of debut albums from the Doors, the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, among many others.In addition to the thriving music scene, 1967 was also the year of the Summer of Love; the year that millions of now-illegal LSD tabs flooded America; Muhammad Ali was convicted of avoiding the draft; Martin Luther King Jr. publicly opposed the war in Vietnam; Stokely Carmichael championed Black Power; Israel won the Six-Day War, and Che Guevara was murdered. It was the year that hundreds of thousands of protesters vainly attempted to levitate the Pentagon. It was the year the word “hippie” peaked and died, and the Yippies were born.Exhaustively researched and informed by interviews with Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Tom Hayden, Cora Weiss, and Gil Scott-Heron (one of many of Goldberg’s high school classmates who entered the culture), In Search of the Lost Chord is a mosaic of seminal moments in the psychedelic, spiritual, rock-and-roll, and political protest cultures of 1967.

Absolutely on Music: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa


Haruki Murakami - 2011
    Before turning his hand to writing, he ran a jazz club in Tokyo, and from The Beatles' Norwegian Wood to Franz Liszt's Years of Pilgrimage, the aesthetic and emotional power of music permeates every one of his much-loved books. Now, in Absolutely on Music, Murakami fulfills a personal dream, sitting down with his friend, acclaimed conductor Seiji Ozawa, to talk, over a period of two years, about their shared interest. Transcribed from lengthy conversations about the nature of music and writing, here they discuss everything from Brahms to Beethoven, from Leonard Bernstein to Glenn Gould, from record collecting to pop-up orchestras, and much more. Ultimately this book gives readers an unprecedented glimpse into the minds of the two maestros. It is essential reading for book and music lovers everywhere.

Rip it Up and Start Again


Simon Reynolds - 2005
    RIP IT UP AND START AGAIN is a celebration of what happened next.Post-punk bands like PiL, Joy Division, Talking Heads, The Fall and The Human League dedicated themselves to fulfilling punk's unfinished musical revolution. The post-punk groups were fervent modernists; whether experimenting with electronics and machine rhythm or adapting ideas from dub reggae and disco, they were totally confident they could invent a whole new future for music.

Humans of New York: Stories


Brandon Stanton - 2015
    The photos he took and the accompanying interviews became the blog Humans of New York. In the first three years, his audience steadily grew from a few hundred to over one million. In 2013, his book Humans of New York, based on that blog, was published and immediately catapulted to the top of the NY Times Bestseller List. It has appeared on that list for over twenty-five weeks to date. The appeal of HONY has been so great that in the course of the next year Brandon's following increased tenfold to, now, over 12 million followers on Facebook. In the summer of 2014, the UN chose him to travel around the world on a goodwill mission that had followers meeting people from Iraq to Ukraine to Mexico City via the photos he took.Now, Brandon is back with the follow up to Humans of New York that his loyal followers have been waiting for: Humans of New York: Stories. Ever since Brandon began interviewing people on the streets of NY, the dialogue he's had with them has increasingly become as in-depth, intriguing, and moving as the photos themselves. Humans of New York: Stories presents a whole new group of humans, complete with stories that delve deeper and surprise with greater candour.