A raucous, absorbing excursion back to the 1960s and ’70s.
A remembrance of an American underground newspaper, as presented by former staffers.
This collection of articles, editorials, and artwork honors the Rag, Austin, Texas’ storied underground newspaper that lasted from 1966 to 1977. Dedicated to keeping Austin weird (before the bumper stickers that carried that motto), the paper was a paean to the counterculture and all it entailed—everything from anti-war articles and chronicles of social change (civil rights, women’s liberation) to Gilbert Shelton’s legendary comic strip “The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers,” which premiered in the Rag in May 1968. Staffers called the paper “A miracle of functioning anarchy,” which seems accurate, and this history is as comprehensive as it is authentic. Some pieces are a bit scattershot in style, but to borrow the vernacular of its time, the Rag was mostly right-on, covering such milestones as the 1968 Democratic Convention, the 1969 Woodstock music festival, and the 1970 Kent State shootings. However, the book is more than a reprise of the counterculture’s greatest hits. True, the usual suspects show up as subjects, including Allen Ginsberg (who’s interviewed here) and Bob Dylan, but the collection doesn’t just trade in nostalgia; it’s too honest for that. Some pieces get bogged down in local politics—such as a detailed account of an 1972 Austin bus strike—but for the most part, they reflect the splintered national psyche as it was. And on occasion, they’re eerily prescient; for example, in one 1968 essay that mentions the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King, the author wonders, “Will John Lennon be next?” Most of all, this book reminds readers that everything old is indeed new again—or perhaps never went away. Consider this excerpt from 1969: “good jobs are not always open to women, women are paid less than men for the same kind of work, women are promoted less frequently than men, and are less likely to be ‘at the top.’ ” Sadly, that could’ve been written yesterday.
A raucous, absorbing excursion back to the 1960s and ’70s.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-365-39054-8
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
