A rehash, sure, but if you’re going to cover ground that’s already been covered, this is the way to do it.
With approximately three zillion available books on the history of rock, why should anybody bother banging out another one?
Veteran rock journalist Robins (Billboard, Rolling Stone, Village Voice) answers that question with a resounding, Why the heck not? He must have figured that if he has the knowledge (check), the writing chops (check) and a point of view (check), it was worth a shot. While it most definitely can be read from beginning to end, some might feel that the most enjoyable way to attack this sweet little tome would be randomly. Stick your finger in the middle of the book, and you might land on a sharp essay about the parallel paths taken by the Beach Boys and the Beatles circa 1966, or a diatribe about the effect MTV had on hair metal bands (and vice versa), or a tongue-in-cheek sidebar on Doors front man Jim Morrison’s astoundingly childish behavior. Robins presents his dissertation with enthusiasm and breezy good humor, yet manages unpretentiously to hammer home his historical points and musical opinions. The story of criminally underappreciated soulster Curtis Mayfield, for instance, is told with love and reverence, and his respectful bit on the Eagles and the early-’70s California school of rock (Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, etc.) makes you recall that at one point in time, these laid-back troubadours were considered pretty cool. His tone is ideal for the topic and the format, a welcome relief from the disproportionate number of self-important academic treatises on modern popular music. Hardcore rock geeks likely won’t learn anything new here, but probably will agree that it’s nice to have all the factoids, as well as some authoritative criticism, in one place. With its high readability factor and bite-sized portions, this is the ultimate rock-’n’-roll bathroom book—and that’s meant with nothing but the utmost respect and admiration.
A rehash, sure, but if you’re going to cover ground that’s already been covered, this is the way to do it.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-4159-7473-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Routledge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2007
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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