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The Beautiful Music All Around Us presents the extraordinarily rich backstories of thirteen performances captured on Library of Congress field recordings between 1934 and 1942 in locations reaching from Southern Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta and the Great Plains. Including the children's play song "Shortenin' Bread," the fiddle tune "Bonaparte's Retreat," the blues "Another Man Done Gone," and the spiritual "Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down," these performances were recorded in kitchens and churches, on porches and in prisons, in hotel rooms and school auditoriums. Documented during the golden age of the Library of Congress recordings, they capture not only the words and tunes of traditional songs but also the sounds of life in which the performances were embedded: children laugh, neighbors comment, trucks pass by. Musician and researcher Stephen Wade sought out the performers on these recordings, their families, fellow musicians, and others who remembered them. He reconstructs the sights and sounds of the recording sessions themselves and how the music worked in all their lives. Some of these performers developed musical reputations beyond these field recordings, but for many, these tracks represent their only appearances on record: prisoners at the Arkansas State Penitentiary jumping on "the Library's recording machine" in a rendering of "Rock Island Line"; Ora Dell Graham being called away from the schoolyard to sing the jump-rope rhyme "Pullin' the Skiff"; Luther Strong shaking off a hungover night in jail and borrowing a fiddle to rip into "Glory in the Meetinghouse." Alongside loving and expert profiles of these performers and their locales and communities, Wade also untangles the histories of these iconic songs and tunes, tracing them through slave songs and spirituals, British and homegrown ballads, fiddle contests, gospel quartets, and labor laments. By exploring how these singers and instrumentalists exerted their own creativity on inherited forms, "amplifying tradition's gifts," Wade shows how a single artist can make a difference within a democracy. Reflecting decades of research and detective work, the profiles and abundant photos in The Beautiful Music All Around Us bring to life largely unheralded individuals--domestics, farm laborers, state prisoners, schoolchildren, cowboys, housewives and mothers, loggers and miners--whose music has become part of the wider American musical soundscape. The hardcover edition also includes an accompanying CD that presents these thirteen performances, songs and sounds of America in the 1930s and '40s.
A direct descendant of the composer of "America the Beautiful" honors his ancestry and national pride with historical and contemporary imagery. Musical notation and an Author's Note, as well as the song's lyrics in Bates's handwriting, are included. Full color.
"America the Beautiful' showcases the stunning spaces closest to our nation's heart--from the woods in the Great Appalachian Valley that Davy Crockett once called home to the breathtaking sweep of California's Big Sur coast to the wilds of Alaska. It also celebrates the people who have made this country what it is, featuring a wide range of images including the Arikara Nation in the early 1900s and scientists preparing for travel to Mars on a Hawaiian island. Culled from National Geographic's vaunted photo archives, spanning a period of more than 130 years, this provocative collection depicts the splendor of this great nation as only National Geographic can, with a dramatic combination of modern and historical imagery--from the creation of architectural icons like the Golden Gate Bridge and Lady Liberty to the last of the country's wild places preserved in our national parks. 0With a structure inspired by the original song "America the Beautiful," this book recognizes what makes our nation great, region by region. And all 50 states and six territories of the U.S. are honored with 50 words from celebrities, historians, activists, conservationists, and politicians who call America home. Profound and inspiring, this is a book for everyone who has ever marveled at the beauty of the United States." --Provided by publisher.
America Throne is living the good life in L.A. Her career is sprouting, and she is in love -- with Jasper Husch, a sexy-sultry artist from San Fran. But just as soon as they've realized domestic bliss, Jasper has a change of heart, and America falters on the slippery slope of hope: hoping that he will come back, hoping that new sex will erase all evidence of him, and hoping that in nurturing a truce with her dead father she will make peace with all men. America's trip from self-destruction to wholeness is a romp on the wilder shores of the West Coast. From a dodgy therapist to a silent retreat, America Throne's "aha" moment culminates with, "While we are all busy swimming upstream, the universe is conspiring to take us to something better." In America the Beautiful, Moon Zappa has taken the broken-heart story and given it a twist all her own through the emotional honesty and edginess of America Throne. Hailed as "brilliant" (Sunday Telegraph Magazine), America the Beautiful is the debut of an unforgettable and unfaltering new voice.
From Paris in the 1920s to London after the Blitz, two women find that a secret from their past reverberates through years of joy and sorrow.... As recovery from World War II begins, expat American Nora Tours travels from her home in southern France to London in search of her missing sixteen-year-old daughter. There, she unexpectedly meets up with an old acquaintance, famous model-turned-photographer Lee Miller. Neither has emerged from the war unscathed. Nora is racked with the fear that her efforts to survive under the Vichy regime may have cost her daughter’s life. Lee suffers from what she witnessed as a war correspondent photographing the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. Nora and Lee knew each other in the heady days of late 1920s Paris, when Nora was giddy with love for her childhood sweetheart, Lee became the celebrated mistress of the artist Man Ray, and Lee’s magnetic beauty drew them all into the glamorous lives of famous artists and their wealthy patrons. But Lee fails to realize that her friendship with Nora is even older, that it goes back to their days as children in Poughkeepsie, New York, when a devastating trauma marked Lee forever. Will Nora’s reunion with Lee give them a chance to forgive past betrayals…and break years of silence to forge a meaningful connection as women who have shared the best and the worst that life can offer? A novel of freedom and frailty, desire and daring, The Beautiful American portrays the extraordinary relationship between two passionate, unconventional women. Readers Guide Included
Every one of us sooner or later walks through hell. The hell of being hurt, the hell of hurting another. The hell of cancer, the hell of a reluctant, thunking shovel full of earth upon the casket of someone we deeply loved, the hell of betrayal, the hell of betraying, the hell of divorce, the hell of a kid in trouble . . . the hell of knowing that this year, like any year, may be our last. We all walk through hell. The point is not to come out empty-handed. . . . There is real and profound power in the suffering we endure if we transform that suffering into a more authentic, meaningful life. In the spirit of such classics as When Bad Things Happen to Good People, A Grief Observed, and When Things Fall Apart, More Beautiful Than Before: How Suffering Transforms Us examines the many ways we can transform physical, psychological, or emotional pain into a more beautiful and meaningful life. As the leader of Wilshire Boulevard Temple, one of America’s largest and most important congregations, located in the heart of Los Angeles, Rabbi Leder has witnessed a lot of pain: "It’s my phone that rings when people’s bodies or lives fall apart," he writes. "The couch in my office is often drenched with tears." After 27 years of listening, comforting, and holding so many who suffered, he thought he understood pain and its challenges—but when it struck hard in his own life and brought him to his knees, a new understanding unfolded before him as he felt pain’s profound effects on his body, spirit, and soul. In this elegantly concise, beautifully written, and deeply inspiring book, Rabbi Leder guides us through pain’s stages of surviving, healing, and growing to help us all find meaning in our suffering. Drawing on his experience as a spiritual leader, the wisdom of ancient traditions, modern science, and stories from his own life and others’, he shows us that when we must endure, we can, and that there is a path for each of us that leads from pain to wisdom. "Pain cracks us open," he writes. "It breaks us. But in the breaking, there is a new kind of wholeness." This powerful book will inspire in us all a life worthy of our suffering; a life gentler, wiser, and more beautiful than before.
A remarkable history of the two-centuries-old relationship between the United States and China, from the Revolutionary War to the present day From the clipper ships that ventured to Canton hauling cargos of American ginseng to swap Chinese tea, to the US warships facing off against China's growing navy in the South China Sea, from the Yankee missionaries who brought Christianity and education to China, to the Chinese who built the American West, the United States and China have always been dramatically intertwined. For more than two centuries, American and Chinese statesmen, merchants, missionaries, and adventurers, men and women, have profoundly influenced the fate of these nations. While we tend to think of America's ties with China as starting in 1972 with the visit of President Richard Nixon to China, the patterns—rapturous enchantment followed by angry disillusionment—were set in motion hundreds of years earlier. Drawing on personal letters, diaries, memoirs, government documents, and contemporary news reports, John Pomfret reconstructs the surprising, tragic, and marvelous ways Americans and Chinese have engaged with one another through the centuries. A fascinating and thrilling account, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom is also an indispensable book for understanding the most important—and often the most perplexing—relationship between any two countries in the world.
At the opening of the 20th century, Americans looked out their windows and saw a landscape that had radically changed since their countryside childhoods. Since the close of the Civil War, the nation had become a land of industrial cities. Smokestacks, bl
Twenty-three handsomely rendered drawings celebrate the beauty and majesty of America From California's Big Sur country to Mount Desert island off the rock-bound coast of Maine, these beautiful drawings capture images of all things great and small. Included, among other landmark American scenes, are views of Everglades wildlife, Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, Mt. McKinley, California redwoods, the Petrified Forest, Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park, and bobwhite quail in a Kansas wheatfield. Colorists of all ages will enjoy painting or coloring these landscapes, which feature: • Beautiful drawings, specially printed with light gray lines that virtually disappear with the addition of colors for a finished, professional look • High-quality paper, printed on one side only and suitable for watercolor, colored pencils, and other media • Perforated pages for easy removal from the book
The America the Beautiful series takes readers on a photographic tour of the country's most beautiful states and most vibrant cities. Top photographers contribute their best images of both well-known destinations and hidden gems, and clear and informative captions bring each scene to life. These handsomely designed books show the beauty of each destination and will be enjoyed by visitors and locals alike. As one of the Thirteen Colonies, Connecticut is home to Revolutionary War sites that attract many visitors. It is also well known for its many educational institutions, particularly Yale University and UConn. Some of the other highlights captured in this handsome new addition to the America the Beautiful series include: Sites old and new in the beautiful capital, Hartford Historic New Haven and the coastline along Long Island Sound The rolling mountains and horse farms of Litchfield Hills The Nathan Hale homestead and Putnam Cottage Outdoor fun on the Connecticut River and the Appalachian Trail Connecticut has something for everybody: a thriving arts scene, bustling towns, zoos, aquariums and some of the prettiest countryside in the eastern United States -- enough to get anyone out exploring.