Bound or beaten, naked or painted, still or spasmodic: the artist lives his or her art publicly in performance or privately in video and photography; these records form the Works section. Amelia Jones's survey examines the most significant works in the context of social history and Tracey Warr's selection of documents combines writings by artists, critics and philosophers.

    By the time Bing Crosby introduced the tune in the winter of 1942, it had evolved into something far grander: the stately yuletide ballad that would become the world's all-time top-selling and most widely recorded song. In this vividly written narrative, Jody Rosen provides both the fascinating story behind the making of America's favorite Christmas carol and a cultural history of the nation that embraced it. Berlin, the Russian-Jewish immigrant who became his adopted country's greatest pop troubadour, had written his magnum opus -- what one commentator has called a "holiday Moby-Dick" -- a timeless song that resonates with some of the deepest themes in American culture: yearning for a mythic New England past, belief in the magic of the "merry and bright" Christmas season, longing for the havens of home and hearth. Today, the song endures not just as an icon of the national Christmas celebration but as the artistic and commercial peak of the golden age of popular song, a symbol of the values and strivings of the World War II generation, and of the saga of Jewish-American assimilation. With insight and wit, Rosen probes the song's musical roots, uncovering its surprising connections to the tradition of blackface minstrelsy and exploring its unique place in popular culture through six decades of recordings by everyone from Bing Crosby to Elvis Presley to *NSYNC. White Christmas chronicles the song's legacy from jaunty ragtime-era Tin Pan Alley to the elegant world of midcentury Broadway and Hollywood, from the hardscrabble streets where Irving Berlin was reared to the battlefields of World War II where American GIs made "White Christmas" their wartime anthem, and from the Victorian American past that the song evokes to the twenty-first-century present where Berlin's masterpiece lives on as a kind of secular hymn.

    When all Jews were ordered to appear at a gathering point, he didn’t go and persuaded others not to go either. Pretending to be a collaborator for the occupation authorities, he kept on saving lives. He rode his bike to nearby villages to barter goods for his family, at the same time trying to get in touch with partisan units. Like a true ‘blade runner’, he always had a narrow escape until a traitor denounced him. Even then, in the concentration camp, forced to exhume and burn the corpses of those massacred in the first months of the occupation, he didn’t think of death – he thought of freedom. And he led others with him - out from the camp, towards life and a happy future – just a day before their scheduled execution. In the night streets of Kiev, hiding from patrols, they made their way home, to reunite with their families. A dreamlike story, but a true one. Some say, Ziama never existed and the story is a fiction. To contradict this statement and to prove the authenticity of the described events, I found transcripts of the KGB interrogations of the witnesses and of those guilty of the crimes committed in Babi Yar, Kiev, in 1941-1943. This is the truth the world needs to know. The further in time we are from the Holocaust, the more denial and more lies we encounter. So that no Jew would ever have to hide under a Gentile name, so that no Jew would ever have his life threatened for the mere fact that he is a Jew – read and spread Ziama’s message to the world. And if the worst happens and History repeats itself – let Ziama’s heroism be an example to all of us how to fight back and not allow anything to destroy us.Here at last, after 70 years, the final truth about Babi Yar.

    The beloved singer and star was also an extraordinary teacher who instilled an abiding passion and mastery of the game in his youngest son, Nathaniel. Winning the US Amateur at 19, Nathaniel went on to compete in high-level professional tournaments for his entire life. In 18 Holes with Bing, Nathaniel introduces us to the Bing Crosby he and his family knew—not the beloved singer who played golf, but a golfer who sang to pay his country club dues. Nathaniel shares exclusive stories about this American icon golfing, working, and playing with some of the most famous people in history—royalty, titans of industry, stars of stage and screen, and champions of the green, including Bob Hope, Dwight Eisenhower, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, and Louis Armstrong. At the book’s heart is an intimate account of a father and a son—how a mutual love of golf formed an exceptional emotional bond for a father and a son. Full of anecdotes, vignettes, and recollections of Bing’s time on the course, the tournaments he created and later sponsored, and the constant encouragement he showed his son, 18 Holes with Bing honors this celebrated golfer, entertainer, and father, and illuminates his life as never before.

    Misrepresented in the media as a black parallel to the Hell's Angels, portrayed as everything from a vicious street gang to quasi- Islamic revolutionaries, The Five Percenters are a movement that began as a breakaway sect from the Nation of Islam (NOI) in 1960s Harlem and went on to impact the formation of hip-hop. References to Five Percent language and ideas are found in the lyrics of wide-ranging artists, such as Nas, Rakim, the Wu-Tang Clan, and even Jay-Z. The Five Percenters are denounced by white America as racists, and orthodox Islam as heretics, for teaching that the black man is Allah. Michael Muhammad Knight ("the Hunter S. Thompson of Islamic literature" -The Guardian) has engaged this culture as both white and Muslim; and over the course of his relationship with The Five Percenters, his personal position changed from that of an outsider to an accepted participant with his own initiatory name (Azreal Wisdom). This has given him an intimate perch from which to understand and examine the controversial doctrines of this influential movement. In "Why I Am a Five Percenter," Knight strips away years of sensationalism to offer a serious encounter with Five Percenter thought. Encoded within Five Percent culture is a profound critique of organized religion, from which the movement derives its name: Only Five Percent can act as "poor righteous teachers" against the evil Ten Percent, the power structure which uses religion to deceive the Eighty- Five Percent, the "deaf, dumb, and blind" masses. Questioning his own relationship to the Five Percent, Knight directly confronts the community's most difficult teachings. In "Why I Am a Five Percenter," Knight not only illuminates a thought system that must appear bizarre to outsiders, but he also brilliantly dissects the very issues of"insiders" and "outsiders," territory and ownership, as they relate to religion and privilege, and to our conditioned ideas about race.

    Celebrating Christmas is so often about nostalgia. With a nod and a wink to the days of Christmas past, It's a Wonderful Christmas presents classic images of the Yuletide icons of mid-20th-century America.Bubbler lights and glow-in-the-dark icicles. Catalogues crammed with toys. Norad bulletins tracking Rudolph's red nose through the nighttime sky. Along with hundreds of such quintessentially American illustrations, author Susan Waggoner stocking-stuffs her lively text with fascinating bits of information, lore, and lists. Wonder what the all-time most popular Christmas song is? How the tradition of the department store Santa got started? The answers are here. Loaded with images of vintage Christmas cards, wrapping paper, magazine ads, Lionel toy trains, and more, all in full color, this charming book will appeal to anyone who associates Christmas with home movies, "The Chipmunk Song," and Santa relaxing with an ice-cold bottle of Coca-Cola.

    In seven separate sketches, he presents his picture of a man whose life is the key to his creation.

    It was the start, for better or for worse, of a long relationship with this unassuming and much maligned little country. He decided to put worldwide opinion to the test: is Belgium really as boring as people say it is? Immersing himself in Belgian culture – and sampling the local beer and ‘cat poo’ coffee along the way – he discovers a country of contradictions; of Michelin stars and processed food, where Trappist monks make the best beer in the world and grown men partake in vertical archery and watch roosters sing (not necessarily at the same time). This colourful and eccentric jaunt is proof that Belgium isn’t just a load of waffle.

    Eventually Tania, a successfully integrated American, journeys back to her fractured homeland with her mother to unravel the secrets of their shared past.

    Million Dollar Bash tells for the first time the whole story of the Basement Tapes, recorded in summer 1967 when Bob Dylan's career was at a crossroads. Recovering from a mysterious motorcycle crash, he gathered together a few musician friends in Woodstock, New York, and informally recorded a bunch of songs intended to be heard by no one but themselves. Instead, they changed music forever. In this new book, musician and author Sid Griffin examines the recordings in detail, demonstrating on every page a musician's insight into the Basement Tapes, the men who recorded them, and the times in which they were made. Every Dylan fan needs this book.

    Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony-winning musical has spawned sold-out performances, a triple platinum cast album, and a score so catchy that it is being used to teach U.S. history in classrooms across the country. But just how historically accurate is Hamilton? And how is the show itself making history?Historians on Hamilton brings together a collection of top scholars to explain the Hamilton phenomenon and explore what it might mean for our understanding of America’s history. The contributors examine what the musical got right, what it got wrong, and why it matters. Does Hamilton’s hip-hop take on the Founding Fathers misrepresent our nation’s past, or does it offer a bold positive vision for our nation’s future? Can a musical so unabashedly contemporary and deliberately anachronistic still communicate historical truths about American culture and politics? And is Hamilton as revolutionary as its creators and many commentators claim? Perfect for students, teachers, theatre fans, hip-hop heads, and history buffs alike, these short and lively essays examine why Hamilton became an Obama-era sensation and consider its continued relevance in the age of Trump. Whether you are a fan or a skeptic, you will come away from this collection with a new appreciation for the meaning and importance of the Hamilton phenomenon.

    These lectures, Mr. Bernstein's most recent venture in musical explication, will make fascinating reading as well. Virgil Thomson says of the lectures: "Nobody anywhere presents this material so warmly, so sincerely, so skillfully. As musical mind-openers they are first class; as pedagogy they are matchless."Mr. Bernstein considers music ranging from Hindu ragas through Mozart and Ravel, to Copland, suggesting a worldwide, innate musical grammar. Folk music, pop songs, symphonies, modal, tonal, atonal, well-tempered and ill-tempered works all find a place in these discussions. Each, Mr. Bernstein suggests, has roots in a universal language central to all artistic creation. Using certain linguistic analogies, he explores the ways in which this language developed and can be understood as an aesthetic surface. Drawing on his insights as a master composer and conductor, Mr. Bernstein also explores what music means below the surface: the symbols and metaphors which exist in every musical piece, of whatever sort. And, finally, Mr. Bernstein analyzes twentieth century crises in the music of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, finding even here a transformation of all that has gone before, as part of the poetry of expression, through its roots in the earth of human experience.These talks, written and delivered when Leonard Bernstein was Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University, are the newest of the author's literary achievements. In addition to a distinguished career as conductor, pianist, and composer, Mr. Bernstein is the recipient of many television Emmys for the scripts of his Young People's Concerts, Omnibus programs, and others, and is the author of The Infinite Variety of Music and The Joy of Music, for which he received the Christopher Award.

    Including many new details and eyewitness accounts never before published, as well as keen insight into the Nashville cats who helped Dylan reach rare artistic heights, it explores the lasting impact of rock’s first double album. Based on exhaustive research and in-depth interviews with the producer, the session musicians, studio personnel, management personnel, and others, Daryl Sanders chronicles the road that took Dylan from New York to Nashville in search of “that thin, wild mercury sound.” As Dylan told Playboy in 1978, the closest he ever came to capturing that sound was during the Blonde on Blonde sessions, where the voice of a generation was backed by musicians of the highest order.

    Filled with historical anecdotes, geographical observations and literary references, Hazan’s walk guides us through an unknown Paris. He shows us how, through planning and modernisation, the city’s revolutionary past has been erased in order to enforce a reactionary future; but by walking and observation, he shows us how we can regain our knowledge of the radical past of the city of Robespierre, the Commune, Sartre and the May ’68 uprising. And by drawing on his own life story, as surgeon, publisher and social critic, Hazan vividly illustrates a radical life lived in the city of revolution.

    To that incontrovertible end, John Entwistle-the Who's beloved bassist-remains an enigmatic yet undeniably influential figure, renowned as much for his immense talent as for his gloriously oversized-seeming character. However, unlike his fellow musicians, Entwistle has yet to be the subject of a major biography. In the years since his death, his enduring legacy has been carefully guarded by his loved ones, preventing potential biographers from gaining close enough access to write a definitive account of his extraordinary life-until now. For the first time, and with the full co-operation of the Entwistle family, The Ox shines a long overdue light on one of the most important figures in rock history. Drawing on his own notes for an unfinished autobiography that he started before his death in 2002, as well as his personal archives and interviews with his family and friends, The Ox gives readers a never-before-seen glimpse into the two very distinct poles of John Entwistle. On the one hand, he was the rock star incarnate-larger than life, self-obsessed to a fault, and proudly and almost defiantly so. Extravagant with money, he famously shipped vintage American cars across the Atlantic without having so much as a driver's license, built exponentially bigger and grandiose bars into every home he owned, and amassed an extraordinary collection of possessions, from armor and weaponry to his patented Cuban-heel boots. But beneath this fame and flutter, he was also a man of simple tastes and traditional opinions. He was a devoted father and family man who loved nothing more than to wake up to a full English breakfast, or to have a supper of fish, chips, and a pint at his local pub. After his untimely death, many of these stories were shuttered away into the memories of his family and friends. At long last, The Ox introduces us to the man behind the myth-the iconic and inimitable John Entwistle.