Download or read book Snake Music A Detroit Memoir written by J. Patrick Reilly and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2012-11-01 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Snake Music is a coming-of-age story set in the 1940s and 1950s in an inner-city Catholic neighborhood of Detroit, Michigan. The author, J. Patrick Reilly, describes his struggles to cope with his mother's near-fatal descent into mental illness, his father's alcoholism and early death, his family's desperate financial straits, and a devastating accident that crippled him for several years. In the midst of these challenges, Snake Music shows the redeeming power of a loving mother, good humor, and a love for music. Reilly reveals an old and terrible family secret and its multigenerational consequences, while telling his own story through the eyes of the boy he was at each stage of his memoir. Snake Music makes the reader laugh out loud, and sometimes cry.

Download or read book Snakes Guillotines Electric Chairs My Adventures in the Alice Cooper Band written by Dennis Dunaway and published by Omnibus Press. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Alice Cooper became the stuff of legend in the early '70s, their shows were monuments of fun and invention. Riding on a string of hits like "I'm 18" and "School's Out," they became America's highest-grossing act, producing four platinum albums and hitting number one on the U.S. and U.K. charts with Billion Dollar Babies in 1973. As teenagers in Phoenix, Dennis Dunaway and lead singer Vince Furnier, who would later change his name to Alice Cooper, formed a hard-knuckles band that played prisons, cowboy bars and teen clubs. Their journey took them from Hollywood to the ferocious Detroit music scene. From struggling for recognition to topping the charts, the Alice Cooper group was entertaining, outrageous, and one-of-a-kind. Dennis Dunaway, the bassist and co-songwriter for the band, tells a story just as over-the-top crazy as their (in)famous shows. Snakes! Guillotines! Electric Chairs! is the riveting account of the band's creation in the '60s, strange glory in the '70s, and the legendary characters they met along the way.

Download or read book Dapper Dan Made in Harlem written by Daniel R. Day and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Dapper Dan is a legend, an icon, a beacon of inspiration to many in the Black community. His story isn’t just about fashion. It’s about tenacity, curiosity, artistry, hustle, love, and a singular determination to live our dreams out loud.”—Ava DuVernay, director of Selma, 13th, and A Wrinkle in Time NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY VANITY FAIR • DAPPER DAN NAMED ONE OF TIME’S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE IN THE WORLD With his now-legendary store on 125th Street in Harlem, Dapper Dan pioneered high-end streetwear in the 1980s, remixing classic luxury-brand logos into his own innovative, glamorous designs. But before he reinvented haute couture, he was a hungry boy with holes in his shoes, a teen who daringly gambled drug dealers out of their money, and a young man in a prison cell who found nourishment in books. In this remarkable memoir, he tells his full story for the first time. Decade after decade, Dapper Dan discovered creative ways to flourish in a country designed to privilege certain Americans over others. He witnessed, profited from, and despised the rise of two drug epidemics. He invented stunningly bold credit card frauds that took him around the world. He paid neighborhood kids to jog with him in an effort to keep them out of the drug game. And when he turned his attention to fashion, he did so with the energy and curiosity with which he approaches all things: learning how to treat fur himself when no one would sell finished fur coats to a Black man; finding the best dressed hustler in the neighborhood and converting him into a customer; staying open twenty-four hours a day for nine years straight to meet demand; and, finally, emerging as a world-famous designer whose looks went on to define an era, dressing cultural icons including Eric B. and Rakim, Salt-N-Pepa, Big Daddy Kane, Mike Tyson, Alpo Martinez, LL Cool J, Jam Master Jay, Diddy, Naomi Campbell, and Jay-Z. By turns playful, poignant, thrilling, and inspiring, Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem is a high-stakes coming-of-age story spanning more than seventy years and set against the backdrop of an America where, as in the life of its narrator, the only constant is change. Praise for Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem “Dapper Dan is a true one of a kind, self-made, self-liberated, and the sharpest man you will ever see. He is couture himself.”—Marcus Samuelsson, New York Times bestselling author of Yes, Chef “What James Baldwin is to American literature, Dapper Dan is to American fashion. He is the ultimate success saga, an iconic fashion hero to multiple generations, fusing street with high sartorial elegance. He is pure American style.”—André Leon Talley, Vogue contributing editor and author

Download or read book All the Way to the Tigers written by Mary Morris and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of NPR's Best Books of the Year From the author of Nothing to Declare, a moving travel narrative examining healing, redemption, and what it means to be a solo woman on the road. In February 2008, a casual afternoon of ice skating derailed the trip of a lifetime. Mary Morris was on the verge of a well-earned sabbatical, but instead she endured three months in a wheelchair, two surgeries, and extensive rehabilitation. One morning, when she was supposed to be in Morocco, Morris was lying on the sofa reading Death in Venice, casting her eyes over these words again and again: “He would go on a journey. Not far. Not all the way to the tigers.” Disaster shifted to possibility and Morris made a decision. When she was well enough to walk again, she would go “all the way to the tigers.” So begins a three-year odyssey that takes Morris to India on a tiger safari in search of the world’s most elusive apex predator. Written in over a hundred short chapters accompanied by the author’s photographs, this travel memoir offers an elegiac, wry, and wise look at a woman on the road and the glorious, elusive creature she seeks.

Download or read book Motor City Music written by Mark Slobin and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2018-11-12 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first-ever historical study across all musical genres in any American metropolis. Detroit in the 1940s-60s was not just "the capital of the twentieth century" for industry and the war effort, but also for the quantity and extremely high quality of its musicians, from jazz to classical to ethnic. The author, a Detroiter from 1943, begins with a reflection of his early life with his family and others, then weaves through the music traffic of all the sectors of a dynamic and volatile city. Looking first at the crucial rule of the public schools in fostering talent, Motor City Music surveys the neighborhoods of older European immigrants and of the later huge waves of black and white southerners who migrated to Detroit to serve the auto and defense industries. Jazz stars, polka band leaders, Jewish violinists, and figures like Lily Tomlin emerge in the spotlight. Shaping institutions, from the Ford Motor Company and the United Auto Workers through radio stations and Motown, all deployed music to bring together a city rent by relentless segregation, policing, and spasms of violence. The voices of Detroit's poets, writers, and artists round out the chorus.

Download or read book Songs Only You Know written by Sean Madigan Hoen and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Rolling Stone Best Book: This memoir of a troubled young man’s escape into the Detroit punk scene is “a Kerouac-like saga fueled with energy and ecstasy” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). Described by Darin Strauss as “Nick Flynn meets Karl Ove Knausgard” and “a book of relentless compassion,” Songs Only You Know is an intense, sprawling memoir, equal parts family tragedy and punk rock road trip. It begins in late 1990s Detroit and spans a decade during which a family fights to hold itself together in the face of insurmountable odds. Sean’s father endangers his career at Ford Motor as he cycles from rehab to binge. His heartsick sister spirals into depression, and his mother relies on her Catholic faith and good works to spare what can be spared. Meanwhile, Sean seeks salvation in a community of eccentrics and outsiders. But the closer Sean comes to realizing his musical dream, the further he drifts from his family and himself.

Download or read book A History of California Literature written by Blake Allmendinger and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blake Allmendinger's A History of California Literature surveys the paradoxical image of the Golden State as a site of dreams and disenchantment, formidable beginnings and ruinous ends. This history encompasses the prismatic nature of California by exploring a variety of historical periods, literary genres, and cultural movements affecting the state's development, from the colonial era to the twenty-first century. Written by a host of leading historians and literary critics, this book offers readers insight into the tensions and contradictions that have shaped the literary landscape of California and also American literature generally.

Download or read book African American Jazz and Rap written by James L. Conyers, Jr. and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Music is an expressive voice of a culture, often more so than literature. While jazz and rap are musical genres popular among people of numerous racial and social backgrounds, they are truly important historically for their representation of and impact upon African American culture and traditions. Essays offer interdisciplinary study of jazz and rap as they relate to black culture in America. The essays are grouped under sections. One examines an Afrocentric approach to understanding jazz and rap; another, the history, culture, performers, instruments, and political role of jazz and rap. There are sections on the expressions of jazz in dance and literature; rap music as art, social commentary, and commodity; and the future. Each essay offers insight and thoughtful discourse on these popular musical styles and their roles within the black community and in American culture as a whole. References are included for each essay.

Download or read book Guitars Bars and Motown Superstars written by Dennis Coffey and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under Berry Gordy, Motown was a place where studio musicians usually stood in the shadows, unlike the solo stars whose names appeared on the albums. Gordy held a tight rein on his musicians, forbidding them from playing for other record companies and denying them credit on his records. In Guitars, Bars, and Motown Superstars, author and guitarist Dennis Coffey tells how he slipped Gordy's draconian rules and went on to success as both a Motown musician and a million-selling solo artist. He offers a fascinating backstage look at the Detroit, L.A., and New York music scenes in the '60s and '70s, with side trips to the smoky clubs and funky studios where the Motown Sound was born. Coffey is credited with creating a lot of that sound, including the famous guitar intro to the Temptations' classic "Cloud Nine." He played on hundreds of Motown albums, and introduced such innovations as the wah-wah pedal into the Motown recording studio. Guitars, Bars, and Motown Superstars is an entertaining and amusing memoir of one of the most dynamic and influential periods in contemporary pop culture, and a unique insight into the ups and downs of the studio guitar-for-hire. It's also a look at the dizzying rags-to-riches-and-back-again career of a rock musician who went from million-seller with a house in the Hollywood Hills, and ultimately back to his roots in the Detroit area. A must for fans of Motown, rock, and you-are-there popculture history. Book jacket.

Download or read book Middlesex written by Jeffrey Eugenides and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2011-07-18 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning eight decades and chronicling the wild ride of a Greek-American family through the vicissitudes of the twentieth century, Jeffrey Eugenides’ witty, exuberant novel on one level tells a traditional story about three generations of a fantastic, absurd, lovable immigrant family -- blessed and cursed with generous doses of tragedy and high comedy. But there’s a provocative twist. Cal, the narrator -- also Callie -- is a hermaphrodite. And the explanation for this takes us spooling back in time, through a breathtaking review of the twentieth century, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie’s grandparents fled for their lives. Back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set our narrator’s life in motion. Middlesex is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire. It’s a brilliant exploration of divided people, divided families, divided cities and nations -- the connected halves that make up ourselves and our world.

Download or read book Always Know written by John Sinclair and published by Trembling Pillow Press. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "all ways know: always night, all ways know-& dig the way i say 'all ways'" -thelonious monk

Download or read book Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences written by and published by . This book was released on 1921 with total page 934 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Somebody s Daughter written by Ashley C. Ford and published by Flatiron Books: An Oprah Book. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NBCC John Leonard Prize Finalist Indie Bestseller “This is a book people will be talking about forever.” —Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed “Ford’s wrenchingly brilliant memoir is truly a classic in the making. The writing is so richly observed and so suffused with love and yearning that I kept forgetting to breathe while reading it.” —John Green, #1 New York Times bestselling author One of the most prominent voices of her generation debuts with an extraordinarily powerful memoir: the story of a childhood defined by the looming absence of her incarcerated father. Through poverty, adolescence, and a fraught relationship with her mother, Ashley C. Ford wishes she could turn to her father for hope and encouragement. There are just a few problems: he’s in prison, and she doesn’t know what he did to end up there. She doesn’t know how to deal with the incessant worries that keep her up at night, or how to handle the changes in her body that draw unwanted attention from men. In her search for unconditional love, Ashley begins dating a boy her mother hates. When the relationship turns sour, he assaults her. Still reeling from the rape, which she keeps secret from her family, Ashley desperately searches for meaning in the chaos. Then, her grandmother reveals the truth about her father’s incarceration . . . and Ashley’s entire world is turned upside down. Somebody’s Daughter steps into the world of growing up a poor Black girl in Indiana with a family fragmented by incarceration, exploring how isolating and complex such a childhood can be. As Ashley battles her body and her environment, she embarks on a powerful journey to find the threads between who she is and what she was born into, and the complicated familial love that often binds them.

Download or read book Nick Cave s Bar written by Aug Stone and published by Aug Stone. This book was released on 2020-12-02 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mission to find a mythological watering hole... In June 1999, Aug Stone and his best friend flew to Germany to find the bar they had heard Nick Cave owned in Berlin. They assumed they would get off the plane, ask 'which way to Nick Cave's bar?', and then spend the rest of their time living it up amidst the wild world of its confines. Instead what followed were nine days of confusion, thwarted plans, and perpetual drunken misery. To this day, they're not sure Nick Cave ever owned a bar in Berlin. Aug Stone is a writer, comedian, & musician. Stone is the author of the comedy novel Off-License To Kill, and his journalism has appeared in The Quietus, The Comics Journal, Under The Radar, and many other sites and magazines. He performs comedy as Young Southpaw, bringing his surreal stories to the world via The Young Southpaw Part Of An Hour podcast and 'blends the arts with the absurd' on his interview show Etcetera ETC With Young Southpaw.

Download or read book Warm Up the Snake written by John Rich and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An action-packed tour of famed director John Rich's half century career as producer or director of such hits as All in the Family, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and MacGyver

Download or read book A Word for Love written by Emily Robbins and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-01-16 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A paean to unabashed, unbridled love." --Khaled Hosseini, New York Times-bestselling author of The Kite Runner A mesmerizing debut set in Syria on the cusp of the unrest, A Word for Love is the spare and exquisitely told story of a young American woman transformed by language, risk, war, and a startling new understanding of love. It is said there are ninety-nine Arabic words for love. Bea, an American exchange student, has learned them all: in search of deep feeling, she travels to a Middle Eastern country known to hold the "The Astonishing Text," an ancient, original manuscript of a famous Arabic love story that is said to move its best readers to tears. But once in this foreign country, Bea finds that instead of intensely reading Arabic she is entwined in her host family's complicated lives--as they lock the doors, and whisper anxiously about impending revolution. And suddenly, instead of the ancient love story she sought, it is her daily witness of a contemporary Romeo and Juliet-like romance--between a housemaid and policeman of different cultural and political backgrounds--that astonishes her, changes her, and makes her weep. But as the country drifts toward explosive unrest, Bea wonders how many secrets she can keep, and how long she can fight for a romance that does not belong to her. Ultimately, in a striking twist, Bea's own story begins to mirror that of "The Astonishing Text" that drew her there in the first place--not in the role of one of the lovers, as she might once have imagined, but as the character who lives to tell the story long after the lovers have gone. With melodic meditation on culture, language, and familial devotion. Robbins delivers a powerful novel that questions what it means to love from afar, to be an outsider within a love story, and to take someone else's passion and cradle it until it becomes your own.

Download or read book Summer of 68 written by Tim Wendel and published by Da Capo Press, Incorporated. This book was released on 2012-03-13 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a year shaped by national tragedy, baseball was shaped by amazing pitching--culminating in a victory by a Detroit Tigers team that faced off against Bob Gibson's St. Louis Cardinals, the 1967 World Series defending champions.