One of those rare books that aims to upend received wisdom and actually succeeds.
A bracing, inclusive look at the dramatic transformation in the way music was produced and listened to during the 20th century.
It wasn’t always something you heard at home or through an earpiece, writes music historian and journalist Wald (Riding with Strangers: A Hitchhiker’s Journey, 2006, etc.). “Until recording, music did not exist without someone playing it, and as a result music listening was necessarily social.” People went out to listen to bands, bought sheet music of the songs they liked and played it with family and friends. Even after the arrival of commercial phonograph recordings, people still went out, because they wanted to dance. Radio made professional music available at home and completed the change records had begun. Now musicians’ names were associated with popular songs, and people used to hearing a particular version on the air wanted to hear it when they went dancing as well. Wald emphasizes the important role of technology, which had at least as much impact as changing musical styles. In fact, he argues, jazz and rock ’n’ roll were not the apocalyptic breaks with the past depicted in conventional accounts. Female fans in particular tended to be receptive to new sounds, especially when embodied by a hot swing band or sexy, hip-swiveling Elvis, without feeling the need to throw out their Glenn Miller or Perry Como records. Wald rejects the purists’ disdain for popularizers like Paul Whiteman and the Beatles, who polished rough-hewn art forms and made them palatable to the mainstream. He doesn’t offer much truly new material, but he puts it together in fresh ways, with wonderful nuggets about the recording ban of the early 1940s and the impact of long-playing albums. It’s a shame the narrative essentially stops in the early ’70s, since Wald surely would have interesting insights about the fragmented, DIY world of MP3 players and musicians selling their product online.
One of those rare books that aims to upend received wisdom and actually succeeds.Pub Date: June 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-19-534154-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2009
Although the during-and-after-Milosevic format in each segment grows tiresome, Seirestad’s educated eye sees all that’s...
An intrepid Norwegian journalist follows the varied fortunes of Serbs—ranging from celebrities to refugees—during and after the reign of Slobodan Milosevic.
Seierstad has trod the bloody ground of Afghanistan (The Bookseller of Kabul, 2003) and Iraq (A Hundred and One Days, 2005) and here recounts her experiences in Serbia between 1999 and 2004. She tells the stories of 13 individuals and one family, virtually all of whom share two beliefs: The Serbs committed no war crimes or “ethnic cleansing”; and the United States is the cause of all their troubles. Says a Milosevic protégé: “America is the source of all wickedness in the world.” To Seierstad’s credit, she does not accept these assertions silently; rather, she prompts her sources to elaborate and to justify. Most merely repeat what they’ve seen on government television—or rumors they’ve heard from frustrated friends. Seierstad interviewed people who varied widely on just about every human dimension—income, education, sophistication, political affiliation, celebrity. Among the latter were some media personalities, a novelist (Ana Rodic, whose Roots was a Serbian bestseller) and rock musician Antonio Pusic, who goes by “Rambo Amadeus” and describes his music as “acid-horror-funk.” Seierstad went boating with him and added some tracks to one of his CDs. Among the many charms of the author’s work is that her Serb contacts are all invariably glad to see her, grateful for her attention, eager to tell their stories. (Some even try to find her a husband.) Perhaps the most touching story is that of a family from Kosovo now living in a refugee center in southern Serbia. When the Kosovo Albanians arrived, bent on ethnic vengeance, the family fled, leaving behind virtually all they had—except their photo albums and their hope.
Although the during-and-after-Milosevic format in each segment grows tiresome, Seirestad’s educated eye sees all that’s important, and her compassionate heart beats in tandem with some poorly understood, deeply afflicted people.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2006
ISBN: 0-465-07602-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2006
A compelling book dealing with the question of MIAs in Vietnam. As a journalist Keating has worked for Soldier of Fortune magazine and the conservative Washington Times. Nonetheless, in the present volume, she uses her skills as an investigative reporter to attack the notion that American POWs and MIAs were left behind in Indochina. A vocal lobby clamors for a full accounting of all MIAs, numbered by the federal government at around 1,200. Reported sightings add fuel to the belief that American soldiers were held hostage by the Vietnamese and abandoned by a government eager to put the war behind it. After all, the logic goes, hadn't it happened to the French in the 1950s? The truth, however, according to Keating, is that the US experience is not that of the French: No American POWs remain. And aside from a few known defectors, all the MIAs are dead. Citing the 80,000 missing from WW II, Keating points out that MIAs are part of the nature of modern warfare, in which the recovery or identification of remains is often impossible. In the case of the Vietnam POWs, however, the military had reduced the number of true ``missing'' to under 100 before a political hue and cry forced them to inflate the MIA list with the names of many men known to be dead but whose bodies were not found. Sightings of live POWs are hoaxes, says Keating, designed to fuel a political machine or to extort money from relatives on the slim hope that the men are alive. She slams, in particular, mercenaries like Bull Simons and Bo Gritz, who plan raids into Indochina (most of which never occur) in search of the lost. The real conspiracy, writes Keating, is not committed by a government bent on hiding a scandal but by those who prey on the hopes and fears of the ones truly left behind—the families of the dead. Highly persuasive.
Pub Date: Nov. 11, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-43016-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
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