While not a definitive history of rock, this book nevertheless provides an illuminating and intriguing look at how the genre...
A debut book explores rock ’n’ roll’s origins in a broad historical and societal context.
When it comes to rock’s beginnings, most music books and encyclopedia entries focus on 1950s pioneers like Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, and Chuck Berry—and perhaps mention such early influencers of the genre as jazz musicians. But Cosby posits that rock’s origins can be traced to two pivotal moments in American history. First, he links the genre to 18th-century slavery in the South and how that informed the music and lyrics of African-American spirituals, “characterized by a certain physicality, such as handclaps and foot stomping.” That spawned the blues, one of rock’s vital ingredients. The author discusses how that genre represented a form of freedom for African-American musicians to express “the deepest” emotions in a racist society. Other genres such as jazz, rhythm and blues, and country-western are referenced as being crucial to rock’s development. The second key moment, according to Cosby, was the climate of ’50s America. While a prosperous decade for the nation, it also represented a malaise in which conformity ruled, with no outlet for articulating rebellion. Thus, rock provided a welcome expression of anti-establishment sentiments for the youth culture through the music of such practitioners as Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard. In addition, Cosby examines the role of religion, especially the Pentecostal faith and how the fervor of its services mirrors today’s rock concerts. The rest of the book falls into familiar territory with its summaries of seminal rock musicians from the ’50s and early ’60s as well as behind-the-scenes men. But it’s the first sections on the early African-American experience and the ’50s that deliver the most enlightening examination of the rock revolution. Still, in just 210 pages, excluding endnotes and index, Cosby manages to pack in a lot of useful, thoughtful, and engaging information throughout the work. Toward the end, he deftly sums up the genre’s importance: “Rock music and its attendant attitude and culture provided direction and language for youth looking for alternatives to the norms and institutions of their parents....Rock did not necessarily have all of the answers, but it was absolutely necessary.” Thankfully, rock has fulfilled that role for 60 years, as it continues to reinvent itself.
Pub Date: May 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4766-6229-9
Page Count: 264
Publisher: McFarland Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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