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Dark Midnight When I Rise tells the story of a troupe of young ex-slaves and freedmen whose odyssey from cotton field and auction block to concert stage and throne room is one of the most remarkable trajectories in American history. Singing the sacred hymns of their ancestors, the Fisk Jubilee Singers introduced the world to African American music. They enchanted such luminaries as Ulysses S. Grant, Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain, Queen Victoria, and Prime Minister William Gladstone, and demonstrated to millions of white Americans and Europeans the courage, dignity, and intelligence of African Americans.

The Jubilees set out in the fall of 1871 to raise money for Nashville's nearly bankrupt Fisk University, one of many black schools established after the Civil War to teach reading and writing to the tens of thousands of emancipated slaves who clamored for an education. Ejected from hotels and railroad cars, shivering in the winter cold, the bedraggled singers performed along the route of the old Underground Railway to Brooklyn, where, a few days before Christmas, they sang for Henry Ward Beecher's Plymouth Church congregation. They caused such a sensation that soon they were raising thousands of dollars a week performing to overflow audiences up and down the Eastern Seaboard. After tours of Great Britain, Holland, Switzerland, and Germany, they not only rescued Fisk but built it into one of the nation's preeminent African American institutions of higher learning.

The Jubilees introduced scores of spirituals, from "Steal Away" to "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," with such soulful artistry they moved throngs to tears. But their contribution extended beyond their music. Forced to do daily battle with American racism in the dark midnight of Reconstruction, they bravely denounced segregation from choir lofts and concert stages, forcing the issue of discrimination onto the world's front pages. In their wake, Northern hotels, railroads, and schools opened their doors to blacks.

Their success came at great cost. The eloquent Benjamin Holmes, who had taught himself to read as a slave, died of tuberculosis. Pious Julia Jackson, who as a small girl had helped her relatives escape from bondage, suffered a paralytic stroke. Frail, stalwart Ella Sheppard, the matriarch of the Jubilees, nearly died of pneumonia after seven years of unceasing toil. As they struggled to overcome exploitation and prejudice, the Jubilees transformed American music forever, foreshadowing the triumphs and travails of thousands of black performers.

Based on the singers' own letters, memoirs, and diaries, Dark Midnight When I Rise is a compelling and deeply moving testament to the inherent decency of all men and women, and the power of art to change the heart of a nation.

• Sales Rank: #681808 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 1.62" h x 6.42" w x 9.32" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In the fall of 1871, while the country was reeling from the effects of the Civil War, a choir of former slaves and freedmen took to the road to raise money for their school, Fisk University, which was near financial collapse. Under the direction of George White, a white missionary who was Fisk's treasurer and self-appointed choirmaster, the group traveled north, performing Negro spirituals. At first they encountered only ridicule, prejudice and physical hardship, and the venture seemed so surely headed for disaster that one alarmed father called his daughter home. But when the remaining singers reached New York City, the flamboyant abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher took up their cause, and the Jubilee Singers began to enjoy stupendous success. They traveled throughout the eastern U.S. and Europe, performing in churches, concert halls and the homes of the elite, astonishing audiences with moving renditions of plantation hymns, which most whites had never heard before. Ward (Our Bones Are Scattered) describes the Singers' three grueling tours, providing intimate portraits of each member of the group as well as their famous patrons and the besieged administrators and teachers back home at Fisk. In the process, he creates a vivid picture of the plight of blacks during and after the Civil War and shows how deeply whites opposed education for Negroes. At times, Ward's history may strike readers as overly detailed, but exhaustive factual accounts are relieved by quotations from the singers' own eloquently recorded impressions. The book is a fascinating tribute to a group of enterprising young men and women whose dignity and courage Ward calls "a constellation in the dark midnight from which they rose." Photos not seen by PW. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-An incredible story of perseverance, courage, and determination. Established in the wake of the Civil War with a mission to teach emancipated slaves to read and write, Fisk University found it difficult to collect tuition from its desperately poor students. In 1871, needing to raise money to keep the school alive and operating, Fisk's treasurer and choirmaster, George White, organized a group of singers who would tour the eastern United States and, later, Europe. These nine students, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, took the music of black America and, in particular, the spiritual, to people of all different backgrounds, from queens to Supreme Court Justices to the common man. However, their efforts, and their success, did not come without a price. The singers faced heart-wrenching discrimination and, in some cases, such poor physical conditions that their health and voices were greatly compromised. Ward has done a wonderful job of relaying the events of the times and the history of the Jubilee Singers. Worthwhile reading about these ambassadors of music.-Peggy Bercher, Fairfax County Public Library, VA

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Seattle-based writer Ward (Our Bones Are Scattered) has given us an intricately detailed account of the career of the Fisk University Jubilee Singers, who introduced Negro spirituals to much of white America while barnstorming on behalf of this private black university in Nashville, TN. The singers toured America and Europe between 1872 and 1903 to raise money for the institution and the American Missionary Association, which sponsored the group. Attracting ever larger and increasingly enthusiastic audiences, mainly white, the singers both raised considerable funds and helped many whites appreciate black American music, especially spirituals. (New York's celebrated minister Henry Ward Beecher was among their many converts.) The author writes well, focusing wisely on the people involved in the enterprise and not ignoring the tragic side of the Jubilee Singers' accomplishments: The strains of the group's touring killed one singer and ruined the voices of several others. Highly recommended for most public and academic libraries.
-A.O. Edmonds, Ball State Univ., Muncie, IN
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Most helpful customer reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent story, mediochrely told
By Matt
As other reviewers have said, the story of the Jubilee Singers is a very fascinating and important one that deserves to be told. Ward's book is well-researched, and includes a lot of detail on background information and concert-by-concert travelogue of the singers. As far as I can find out, this is the only place where you can get a history of the Jubilees in more than a few paragraphs.
However, Ward doesn't tell it very well. The reading gets tedious and slow almost from the very beginning. Ward has a tendency to get sidetracked by tangential information, and his habit of breaking up large quotes between a paragraph and an indented block is annoying. Although he tries to provide personal information, there is very little emotion in the telling of such an emotional story.
Another thing--if you are expecting, as I was, a study of the Jubilees' music, you will be disappointed. Ward states in the introduction that he is not a musicologist and his intent is not to chronicle the history or influence of slave music. He is true to his word. Very little is said about the actual music, except that it had the power to move audiences. Finally, after 400 pages, he talks about the Jubilees' influence on later music for a page or two. But this is the story of the singers, not the music, and their struggle to present their heritage in song and to preserve their school.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Very informative telling
By Mark S. Crawford
Author Andrew Ward presents a very informative telling of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. He does so with an impressive use of personal writings from the students, various administrators, and other individuals that hosted or otherwise interacted with the group. Reading about the singers' experiences through the participants' own words made for a greater degree of empathy and understanding. With that said, there are many names to keep track of, and some passages had so much detail I had to read paragraphs more than once. In the end, the read was well worth the time and I came away impressed that - given the times and resources - such an endeavor as the Fisk Jubilee Singers was even attempted, let alone successful.

For me, the take-sways included learning more about Professor George White (the group's director), General Fisk (didn't know he was white), the purpose of the Freedman schools, the role of the American Missionary Association, and the lives of the students before, during, and after their time at Fisk (there's enough story lines to produce a great movie). The chapter notes and end sources were also very informative.

Very vivid and humanizing telling of one of the better known events in African American history, as well as music history.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
This Son of Fisk is Forever on the Alter
By Anthony M. Murphy '99
Once again the influence of African-American Culture takes center stage in the cultural development of America. It was these young and very naive band of singers, that forever altered the course of music in America. Bringing to the world, a genre of music that was(is) able to hold the audience in complete awe. This story chronicles each members humble beginnings, a story that brings to light the triumph of the human spirit and the unfailing resolve of African-Americans "to make a way out of no way"

See all 6 customer reviews...

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>> PDF Ebook Atlantic Fever: Lindbergh, His Competitors, and the Race to Cross the Atlantic, by Joe Jackson

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For five weeks--from April 14 to May 21, 1927--the world held its breath while fourteen aviators took to the air to capture the $25,000 prize that Raymond Orteig offered to the first man to cross the Atlantic Ocean without stopping.

Joe Jackson's Atlantic Fever is about this race, a milestone in American history whose story has never been fully told. Delving into the lives of the big-name competitors--the polar explorer Richard Byrd, the French war hero René Fonck, the millionaire Charles Levine, and the race's eventual winner, the enigmatic Charles Lindbergh--as well as those whose names have been forgotten by history (such as Bernt Balchen, Stanton Wooster, and Clarence Chamberlin), Jackson brings a completely fresh and original perspective to the race to conquer the Atlantic.

Atlantic Fever opens for us one of those magical windows onto a moment when the nexus of technology, innovation, character, and spirit led so many contenders from different parts of the world to be on the cusp of the exact same achievement at the exact same time.

• Sales Rank: #985493 in Books
• Published on: 2012-05-08
• Released on: 2012-05-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.29" h x 1.64" w x 6.47" l, 1.78 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 544 pages

Review
[Atlantic Fever is] a fantastically entertaining book. (Matthew Price, The Boston Globe)

A soaring account of the first flight across the Atlantic . . . [Atlantic Fever is] engaging, suspenseful . . . [a] revelatory book. (Daniel Dyer, Plain-Dealer (Cleveland))

By retelling the story of Charles Lindbergh's great 'first' alongside the nice and not-so-nice guys who finished last--from Admiral Byrd to Douglas 'Wrong Way' Corrigan--Joe Jackson gives us a book that is as suspenseful as it is thoughtful. Atlantic Fever is full of wonder at what it really means for human beings to fly, an achievement in which failure is not merely possible but even probable. Plainspoken and fast-paced, exhilarating and hilarious, Atlantic Fever reminds us why we are drawn to look skyward and why it is just as important to look out below. (Scott A. Sandage, author of Born Losers: A History of Failure in America)

Lindbergh may have been portrayed as 'Lindbergh Alone' and the 'Lone Eagle,' but except for having no companion in the cockpit, he was far from that. Rather, he was one of a cast of players in what Joe Jackson calls 'the aviator madness that rounded out the Jazz Age.' In Atlantic Fever, Jackson brilliantly re-creates Lindbergh and the drama and tragedy that surrounded his feat. (John Milton Cooper, Jr., author of Woodrow Wilson: A Biography)

With rich detail and a compelling story, Atlantic Fever recaptures the almost forgotten array of fliers and dreamers that accompanied Charles Lindbergh's solitary crossing in The Spirit of St. Louis. The world of individual daring and aspiration that followed the devastation of World War One has never come more alive. (Leo Braudy, author of The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History)

[In Atlantic Fever] a talented storyteller re-creates the signature moment of aviation's golden age . . . Throughout, [Joe Jackson] folds in unfailingly apt observations about the psychology of aviators, the peculiar mix of wealth and want that characterized the 1920s, the hunger for heroes, the role of chance and the turbocharging effect of mass media . . . With stirring detail and perceptive insight about the pilots and the public, Jackson recaptures the tone and tenor of a frantic era's national obsession. (Kirkus (starred review))

[Atlantic Fever is] a penetrating evaluation of Lindbergh's triumph set against the backdrop of the hero-worshipping Twenties. Painstaking researched, Jackson's balanced work is a singular contribution to the history of flight in general and to Lindbergh historiography in particular. (Library Journal (starred review))

Jackson does aviation history an immense service by recalling the internationally representative group of fliers who competed in the race to cross the Atlantic. Along the way, he also details the scientific and technological advances that made this feverish aeronautical pursuit possible. Jackson's breezy narrative style makes it easy to get swept up in Atlantic Fever. (Margaret Flanagan, Booklist)

About the Author

Joe Jackson is the author of five works of nonfiction and one novel. His most recent book, The Thief at the End of the World:Rubber, Power, and the Seeds of Empire, was named one of Time magazine's Top Ten Nonfiction Books of 2008.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Atlantic Fever
PART IPHANTOM TRAVELERSIn flying, I tasted the wine of the gods.--Charles LindberghONESTRANGE DAYSCharles Lindbergh hooked his leg over the right side of the cockpit and prepared to throw himself from his plane. Only a day earlier he'd fretted that his life had stalled, and now, as if to prove the point, his army-salvage DH-4 had run out of gas somewhere on the mail run between St. Louis and Chicago. It was the night of September 16, 1926: Overhead, the clear midwestern sky glinted with stars; below him, a fog bank obliterated all trace of the ground. He balanced for a second, then launched himself over the side.Landing "blind" in a fog was suicide, the leading cause of death among airmail pilots. But parachute jumps were almost as dicey. If a parachutist failed to jump out far enough, he'd be caught by the plane's control wires and stabilizers. The wings hissing past at 100 miles per hour could slice through a man like a knife through cheese. Since 'chutes were often defective, a jumper could hit the earth at tremendous speed. The tall and lanky flier called "Slim" by his pals would have been remembered as a "twisted and horribly distorted thing."He did not drop immediately. One of the strangest sensations discovered by a jumper was that, for the first few seconds, he slid through the air like a bird. The 100 mph impetus given to him by the hurtling ship shot him forward with it, facedown, hands and feet extended, about 30 feet beneath the wing of the plane. It was not an unpleasant sensation. The cold wind whistled past one's face; instead of a breathless descent, you cut through the air like a projectile.Then gravity took over and Lindbergh dropped, turning somersaults for two or three seconds before pulling the ripcord.He'd been through this before. The idea of floating to earth beneatha huge canopy of silk was not particularly new. Leonardo da Vinci first sketched out the possibility in one of his many notebooks; the idea of a "Fall Breaker" came to him in a dream. The first successful experiment occurred in 1779, when Joseph and Étienne Montgolfier loaded a sheep into a basket hung beneath a large parasol. They pushed it off a high tower, and though the sheep lived, it voiced its objections the entire way down. More often than not, barnstormers used parachutes for "stunts," and Slim's entry into aviation in May 1922 was as a wing walker and parachutist to draw paying crowds. This was his third jump to save his life: he'd ditched once in 1925, as an army flight cadet, then once earlier this year near St. Louis, when his controls had jammed. Yet he didn't like to jump, and was more likely than most pilots to stick with his plane as it went down.The 'chute boomed above him. He jerked up in the harness, then swayed back and forth as the shrouds rustled overhead. He pulled out his flashlight and pointed it past his feet. He saw an endless quilt of fog covering the farmland somewhere north of Peoria.Until this point, the summer had been uneventful. Barely a year out of army flight school, Lindbergh had been named chief pilot when the Robertson Aircraft Corporation inaugurated its St. Louis-Chicago airmail run on April 25, 1926. It was quite an honor for the twenty-four-year-old former barnstormer, and the most responsibility he'd ever had. The "CAM-2" route, with its unpredictable weather, was considered one of the most dangerous runs in the country, but the skies during the summer of 1926 had been clear. He flew five round trips a week, following railroad tracks, rivers, and, at night, the soft glowing lights of farm towns. He lived at the edge of Lambert Field, in a room rented from an airport mechanic; he cooked two meals a day, and for the first time in his short career as a flier, felt he had found a permanent home.But permanence made him uneasy. When his mother, in Detroit, sent his weekly package of candy, cheese, and nuts, she sometimes included magazines filled with the exploits of other fliers. The mid-1920s had suddenly turned into the glory days of long-distance flying: in 1924 six army aviators flew 27,553 miles around the globe, the first to do so in an airplane; the Italian flier Francesco de Pinedo flew from Rome to Tokyo by way of Australia. In May, Lindbergh had read how navy commander Richard Byrd had been the first to fly over the North Pole; Lindbergh had applied to take part in Byrd's expedition, but was turneddown. He dreamed of flying to Alaska or entering the next long-distance race, wherever that might be. It seemed that another age of exploration was taking shape, like that of Columbus and Magellen, only this time in the air. And he was getting left behind.This night's run had started as inauspiciously as others in this long, boring summer. He left Lambert Field at 5:55 p.m. and noted a light ground haze, though the skies were practically clear. Night arrived twenty-five miles north of Peoria, and with it came the fog. It rolled over the countryside, wiping out all features. By Maywood, which was Chicago's airmail field, the fog reached an altitude of 900 feet; the field crew set searchlights out and burned two barrels of gas, but Slim was still unable to find clear ground. He circled back, and his engine stopped at 8:20 p.m. He thought he had more gas, and did not learn till later that when a mechanic had repaired a leak, he'd switched the normal 110-gallon tank for an 85-gallon replacement without telling anyone. Lindbergh switched to his reserve tank and released a parachute flare, but this, too, was swallowed by the fog. He climbed to 5,000 feet. At 8:40 p.m. the reserve tank died.Lindbergh went over the side and pulled the ripcord; he swayed in his harness, watching the fog approach below. Though this was his first night jump, everything initially seemed "like pie." But as he sank into the clouds, things turned strange. All of a sudden, he heard the burbling engine of his abandoned plane. He'd neglected to cut the switches when he bailed out, thinking all the gas was depleted. Instead, the DH-4's nose dipped down and the last cupfuls of gas had evidently trickled into the motor. Lindbergh and his plane were spiraling to earth at the same level and at the same rate of speed.Then he saw her, apparently coming for him out of the fog. The fabric wings, painted silver, caught light from the stars; the maroon fuselage looked black in the night, U.S. AIR MAIL painted in big white letters on the side. She flew as straight as if a phantom pilot sat at the controls. He grabbed the risers of his parachute, ready to swing the 'chute aside.But the plane passed harmlessly about a hundred yards away.Then she returned. Slim realized he was on the outside of the spiral, and each time the plane came back, she was a little farther away. The plane returned five times: he listened as the engine grew faint, then loud, until once again her slow, steady bulk reappeared at his level. She was like some poor lost pet that couldn't give him up and kept searching for him.He sank deeper into the fog. It was cold in the cloudbank, and he felt the chill through his heavy flight suit. He reached again for his flashlight, but realized he had dropped it in the excitement when the plane first appeared. All sound was hushed; the ground rushed up, but he could not judge how far away it was. The DH-4 passed once more, but too far away this time for him to see. He held his feet together so he wouldn't straddle some farmer's wall or barbed-wire fence, and covered his face with his hands. Shrouded in white between heaven and earth, Lindbergh waited in silence to land. 
 
Nine hundred fifty-five miles to the east, New York's typical hot and humid summer had proved anything but boring. Summers in the city were always murder, but this year an inexplicable unrest had developed that no one could quite explain. Social commentators dubbed it the "American nervousness," but something more basic was going on. Perhaps, they theorized, six years of Prohibition had taken their toll.If people weren't dying for a drink, they were dying in unexpected ways. In June three policemen were murdered. The first officer was shot to death in a holdup; the second, during a traffic stop in Brooklyn. The third killing occured, amazingly, while a detective was booking a car thief at police headquarters in the Tombs. In mid-August Rodolfo Alfonso Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla, known to the world as Rudolph Valentino, checked into Polyclinic Hospital for severe stomach pains. Surgeons removed an inflamed appendix and closed two perforated gastric ulcers, and the thirty-one-year-old screen icon seemed on the mend. But then he developed peritonitis and slipped into a coma. Worried fans gathered on the sidewalk outside the hospital. On August 23, Valentino seemed to rally; his eyes fluttered and he gazed at the head of United Artists, seated by his bed. "Don't worry, chief, I'll be all right," Valentino promised. Then he died.Maybe Mayor James J. Walker should have predicted what followed. The dapper, flamboyant face of Tammany Hall, the political machine that ran New York and its five boroughs, "Beau James" had an innate sense of the public mood. He could feel its pulse in his sleep, he said. New York loved its characters, and he was happy to meet the demand. Rather than spend his days behind a desk, Walker held court at the Central Park Casino, the supper club whose entrance fee was $22,000.It was there he wined and dined his mistress, Betty Compton, who'd appeared on Broadway with Fred Astaire. Before politics Walker had been a songwriter: his biggest hit, "Will You Love Me in December (As You Do in May)?" To him, politics and entertainment weren't a far remove.But who could have known? Valentino's death released a worldwide flood of mourning, and New York determined its style. Some Hawaii...

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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Extremely worthwhile
By Schmerguls
This 2012 book relates the efforts of aviators to win the Orteig prize of $25,000 offered in 1919 to the first person succeeding in making the Paris-NewYork flight. The accounts of the persons competing and the failures and tre success of Lindbergh in accomplishing the feat on May 20 and 21, 1927, is extremely well-told and the account of Lindbergh's flight is the high point of the book. But the book goes on to relate the efforts of persons seeking to emulate the feat, including the successful flight of Clarence Chamberlain of Denison, Iowa on June 4 to 6, 1927. The research is of a high qauality and there are ample footnotes and an excellent bibliography. The only reason the book does not get five stars from me is that the chapters atfer the victory by Lindbergh inevitably lack some of the drama so prominent in the account up to and icluding the time of the successful flight. I found this book an absorbing memorable experiene.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
a first rate treatment
By Lawrence Meyer
Because the author is a good story teller, I enjoyed Atlantic Fever much more than I expected. He keeps the plotline taut, the characters vivid, and the narrative well-paced. Setting the familiar story of Lindberg's triumph within the wider context of all Lindberg's rivals mutes the glamorization of Lindberg and adds depth of perspective. This is a first rate treatment of the material.

Where I might quibble with Jackson is with his too gentle judgment of Levine. Levine's bogus offer to sell his plane to Lindberg and his contract squabbles with his pilots to me show Levine in a pretty squalid light. Lindbergh's irritation with Levine, if not his lifelong antisemitism that may have resulted, was fully justified. Levine was toying around with Lindberg, just as he toyed around with his pilots subsequently in the contracts he dangled before them. On the other side of the ethnic rainbow, Byrd was no pillar at mixing business acumen and personal honor either. He treated his colleagues just as shabbily. As a result, where Lindberg had the edge on all his competitors was that he was his own boss. No morale issues due to fuzzy purposes or divided counsel afflicted Lindberg.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Fascinating, Excellent Tale--and It's True!
By E. D. Haynes
This is an excellent narrative, compelling to read. It includes a thorough character study of each of the pilots and others involved in competing for the Ortieg prize. Their later lives and careers are also noted. Many individuals important to the story are not generally known today. All had an influence on the rapid development of the aviation industry. The text is superbly researched, including a chronology and extensive list of original sources.

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Atlantic Fever: Lindbergh, His Competitors, and the Race to Cross the Atlantic, by Joe Jackson PDF
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~ Ebook Download The Night of Wishes: Or the Satanarchaeolidealcohellish Notion Potion, by Michael Ende

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Told partly in rhyme, this account of the adventures of sorcerer Beelzebub Preposteror introduces a host of unusual and compelling characters. By the author of The Neverending Story.

• Sales Rank: #2297333 in Books
• Published on: 1992-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.25" h x 5.75" w x .75" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 216 pages

From Publishers Weekly
On New Year's Eve, Maledictus Maggot, bailiff to His Excellency the Minister of Pitch Darkness, arrives in the laboratory of Shadow Sorcery Minister Beelzebub Preposteror, to remind Beelzebub that he is behind on his contract to wreak havoc on the world, and that if he does not make good before midnight, His Hellish Excellency will "foreclose." In order to avoid this fearsome fate Beelzebub, together with his aunt, Tyrannia Vampirella (who has also been threatened with "foreclosure"), set out to brew the eponymous Notion Potion, a powerful punch that will grant them their every wish. Meanwhile, Beelzebub's cat Mauricio and Tyrannia's raven Jacob get wise to the plot,stet comma/eed and launch a desperate quest to stop their masters and thereby save the world. Ende ( The Neverending Story ) has brewed a potent dose of comic fantasy, bubbling over with clever wordplay and slapstick incidents, and spiked with verse. Although the prose (or perhaps the translation from the German) is not always graceful nor idiomatic, sheer momentum and the raw power of Ende's inventiveness are sufficient to carry readers all the way through this extravaganza. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Grade 4-6-- Poor Beelzebub Preposteror. It's New Year's Eve and despite being an ``up-to-date, state-of-the-art sorcerer,'' he has fallen woefully behind in fulfilling the terms of his contract with his Excellency, Satan. The Minister of Pitch Darkness has granted Preposteror ``extraordinary powers'' on the condition that the magician annually render extinct 10 species of animals, pollute 5 rivers, kill 10,000 trees, and generally visit mayhem on Mother Nature. Unless Preposterer meets his quota by midnight, Beelzebub's bailiff, a creature as unpleasant as its name, Malidictus Maggot, is threatening to foreclose. Preposterer has no choice but to join forces (reluctantly) with his aunt, a wicked witch named Tyrannia Vampirella. Unfortunately, this plot summary makes the book sound much better than it is. It is truly never ending in its plodding expositions, painfully forced humor, clumsy dialogue, and one-dimensional characterization. `` `If you can get enthusiastic about something,' '' one character notes, `` `then do it--and if you can't, then go to sleep.' '' Nighty-night . . . . --Michael Cart, formerly at Beverly Hills Public Library
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Good confronts evil in a comic adventure spiced with rambunctious wordplay and deepened by allusions to the world's real afflictions. Beelzebub Preposteror, sorcerer, and his aunt Tyrannia Vampirella have received an ultimatum: complete their annual quota of devastation (pollution, extinction of species, rapacious business deals, etc.) or be hauled off to the nether regions by emissary Maledictus Maggot. Collaborating (with difficulty, since they double-cross each other at every turn), they concoct an arcane brew empowering imbibers with wishes that work by contraries. Meanwhile, their servants--a cat and a raven, spies from the animal kingdom--strive to foil them before the midnight deadline, a feat they eventually accomplish with the help of an additive that reverses the potion's effect. Like Douglas Adams's space adventures, the fun here is less in the events than in the witty details--in this case, including constructing compound words in the German fashion (see subtitle) and rhymed, punning incantations. Any translation would be a tour de force; this one is remarkably good. What must be new puns are coined felicitously, and while some of the verse bears marks of compromise between sound and sense, the result is often highly amusing. A little slow getting started but topped off with several ingenious, rapid-fire twists; clever and highly imaginative. (Fiction. 12+) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Most helpful customer reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
A great book, but you can't translate it in all its beauty
By A Customer
A MUST READ for all Michael Ende fans - however it did loose some of its beauty when translated into english - being german there are some things i see in the drawings, others might not catch But nontheless a great book for young and old

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Hilarious book, unfortunate translation
By Avery
The two professional reviews Amazon provides hint at the main problem with this book: the translator did not take the opportunity to turn the assault of German puns into a similarly overwhelming experience in English. Rather, you have hints of former puns, and a cute fairy tale with an underlying Al Gore parable even a middle schooler could grasp on the first reading. This book is still worth buying if you like Ende, because it will give you further insights into the lifelong themes he outlined in Momo and The Neverending Story, but when it comes to the translation quality it's as if you're looking at a print of Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" so badly blurred you can't tell it's made up of dots. It's still a colorful experience but it's nothing new. Someone who is not already a fan of Ende would be totally justified to throw up his arms and say, "So what's the big deal?"

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
All in all it's not horrible for a kid's story
By James E Miller
All in all it's not horrible for a kid's story, but given that its out of print, it's not worth the effort to get it. The plot was filled with Deus Ex Machinas and neither of the protagonists were really good role models, even beyond normal character flaws. One of them was unabashedly lecherous, and that flaw was never even addressed. Most of the humor was nonsense for the sake of nonsense, which isn't bad in and of itself, but you could find much better examples of this type of humor elsewhere.

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^^ Free PDF Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck: Why We Can't Look Away, by Eric G. Wilson

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Why can't we look away?

Whether we admit it or not, we're fascinated by evil. Dark fantasies, morbid curiosities, Schadenfreude: As conventional wisdom has it, these are the symptoms of our wicked side, and we succumb to them at our own peril. But we're still compelled to look whenever we pass a grisly accident on the highway, and there's no slaking our thirst for gory entertainments like horror movies and police procedurals. What makes these spectacles so irresistible?

In Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck, the scholar Eric G. Wilson sets out to discover the source of our attraction to the caustic, drawing on the findings of biologists, sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, philosophers, theologians, and artists. A professor of English literature and a lifelong student of the macabre, Wilson believes there's something nourishing in darkness. "To repress death is to lose the feeling of life," he writes. "A closeness to death discloses our most fertile energies."

His examples are legion, and startling in their diversity. Citing everything from elephant graveyards and Susan Sontag's On Photography to the Tiger Woods sex scandal and Steel Magnolias, Wilson finds heartening truths wherever he confronts death. In Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck, the perverse is never far from the sublime. The result is a powerful and delightfully provocative defense of what it means to be human--for better and for worse.

• Sales Rank: #864155 in Books
• Published on: 2012-02-14
• Released on: 2012-02-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 7.85" h x .92" w x 5.36" l, .65 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

From Booklist
Wilson, a professor of English literature and author of Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy (2008), certainly has an unusual way of looking at things. Admitting his own fascination for the macabre and the tragic, he asks why we, as a society, are drawn to things that you’d think should repel us. Why do we have morbid curiosity, and what does that say about us? Exploring the question through consideration of a variety of phenomena—our fascination with the 9/11 footage of the towers coming down, our enjoyment of other people’s failures, our fondness for Hollywood tearjerkers and horror flicks, the popularity of serial killers, real and fictional—he develops the theme that we need this element of ourselves, that it’s essential to us. In essence, he argues that we need darkness in order to understand light. Not, perhaps, a blindingly original theme, but Wilson explores it with zeal and a great deal of wit. It’s hard, as one reads this fascinating book, not to see quite a bit of ourselves. --David Pitt

Review
Eric G. Wilson's smart, probing new book . . . sets out to explain what lies beneath our collective fascination with death and suffering . . . Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck isn't some holier-than-thou polemic out to cure us of our dark leanings . . . Instead, it simply aims to help readers gain 'a fulfilling response to two of life's greatest, most pressing and persistent questions. What is the meaning of suffering? What is the significance of death? . . . The book's slim, peripatetic chapters cover an awful lot of erudite territory, as Wilson draws ideas and research from a delightful grab bag of academics, artists and thinkers. Aristotle, Freud, Kant, Goya and Hardy all make appearances, alongside an assortment of sociopaths and serial murderers. (John Wilwol, NPR.org)

Wilson is provocative, entertaining and above all honest. (Chris Tucker, The Dallas Morning News)

A leisurely, light-footed overview of our cultural obsession with doom, gloom, and gore. (Josh Rothman, The Boston Globe)

Compelling . . . Wilson keeps hearing a voice within that tells him to 'look.' He follows this instinct, energized by the idea that his thoughtful connoisseurship of the world's darkness is good--noble, even. Wilson draws on philosophers, poets, psychologists, filmmakers and more to build a case that 'an eager, open-minded interest in the macabre' provides 'a special invitation to think about life's meanings' . . . Wilson's guidance is personal, engaging, and convincing . . . The book offers heaps of terribly tantalizing topics. (Chris Jozefowicz, Rue Morgue)

Mixing anecdotes, arguments and his own quirky persona, the author of Against Happiness delivers a provocative meditation on morbid curiosity and the pleasure of seeing others suffer. (The Times-Picayune (New Orleans))

Wilson explores [his theme] with zeal and a great deal of wit. It's hard, as one reads this fascinating book, not to see quite a bit of ourselves. (David Pitt, Booklist)

[Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck] reassures: enjoying grotesque, horrible, frightening images is a natural impulse. From fairy tales to crime dramas, they hit us where we are most human. (Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe)

Ruminations of an exceptionally intelligent academic on why people--himself among the guilty parties--seem to search out and enjoy instances of human pain and suffering . . . [Wilson] does a thorough job of examining the people who can't look away. (Nona Nelson, The Roanoke Times)

[Wilson is] fluent and comfortable, whether he is poking for clues in the bewildering complexity of Edmund Burke's sublime, as experienced in the stomach-dropping irresistibilty of, say, a tornado; the Jungian shadow, that archive of everything we hate about ourselves, those destructive crazes and unadmitted tendencies without recognition of which we would not be whole; or the simple, malicious pleasure of another's misfortunes. (Peter Lewis, The Barnes & Noble Review)

Invoking everything from horror movies and television news footage of the Sept. 11 attacks to Dante's tormented verse and Goya's paintings of cannibals, Wilson makes a strong case that humans are natural-born rubberneckers . . . A hybrid of memoir, journalim and theory, [Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck] investigates what this impulse tells us about ourselves and how it might inspire constructive reactions like compassion . . . Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck necessarily deals with a host of grim subjects, yet there are also instances of unqualified beauty. (Kevin Canfield, Star-Tribune (Minneapolis))

In the teeming ranks of the American Professoriat, you could argue that Eric G. Wilson is among those most palpably needed by the world at large . . . Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck is a personal book that touches on 'death tourism,' Hannibal Lecter, Maurice Sendak, Tipper Gore, Francisco Goya, serial killers (a handwritten note by Jeffrey Dahmer can fetch $1,700, he cheerfully informs us), Tiger Woods sex scandals, and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, all embedded in an Alexandrian library of literary allusions that can be encompassed in less than 200 pages. (Jeff Simon, Buffalo News)

About the Author

Eric G. Wilson is the Thomas H. Pritchard Professor of English at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He is the author of Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, The Mercy of Eternity: A Memoir of Depression and Grace, and five books on the relationship between literature and psychology.

Most helpful customer reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
My Review - Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck
By Philip Arnold
After reading and enjoying Eric G. Wilson's Against Happiness, I was pleased to see his latest offering, Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck. With much of the same scrutiny and informed insight, Wilson lifts the veil and illuminates the darker forces that shadow the human condition. What we often assume to be abnormal, taboo, or insensitive in our attractions or curiosities, Wilson claims instead to be affirming. Clearly it's a tough argument. But the book covers a great deal of territory - from cinema and the news media to 'celebrity' criminals to horrific public spectacles - to posit a convincing, if not a sometimes unsettling, argument. What I appreciate the most are the various angles he uses to support his ideas, borrowing from psychology, mythology, literature, etc. All in all, its a great read, deeply insightful, exhaustive in its coverage, and highly persuasive. I highly recommend the book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
An extended essay with some good content, but page after page
By Michael S. Gross
An extended essay with some good content, but page after page, the moralistically self-obsessed author wrings his hands until they chafe, while the reader vainly hopes that he will finally wake up to the fact that the problem is with his conventional leftyish premises. But he never questions these premises
.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Hard to look away
By Deb
Welcome to the dark side.

And, now meet your guide: author Eric G. Wilson, whose book _Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck_ takes us on an illuminating voyage deep into our dark side. He explores the innate morbid curiosity found within all of us (yes, all of us!), and shows how our dark side might not be so dark after all. His book supports his core belief that:
"the morbid offers illuminations brighter than the sun...Darker emotional states--doubt, confusion, alienation, despair--inspire a deeper and more durable experience of the sacred than contentment does." (p. 163)

Each of the 50 bite-sized, yet content-rich, chapters delve into an aspect of morbid curiosity, which Eric defines as "an eager, open-minded interest in the macabre--disease or destruction or death--as a special invitation to think about life's meanings...a spiritual yearning, a hunger to penetrate the most profound mysteries of existence." (pp. 126, 186)

Our morbid curiosity is what brings us to the dark side. Gory horror films, the literary genre of tragedy, the misfortunes of others, flirtations with death, the increasingly popular dark tourism industry, our fascinations with serial killers--we just can't seem to get enough. Eric unearths the factors fueling this fascination with the macabre, including: it allows us to better empathize with the pain of others; it helps us build morale; it inspires ecstasy; it helps us become psychologically whole and integrate our psyche's destructive powers into our bright reason; it reminds us of our imperfections and cuts through the delusions of what's real vs. unattainable (i.e. a world that needs to be perpetually happy and bursting with butterflies and happy faces); it serves as a catalyst for purgation and catharsis for aggression; it allows for the incorporation of the shadow; it offers us a sense of community; it helps us find meaning in suffering and contemplate life's mysteries of love and death; and ultimately, it opens us to truth, good, and the beautiful.

He also extends his exploration of the dark side to fathom his own personal struggle with bipolar disorder and the unexpected wisdom of depression:
"Stripped of its dark powers, the disorder has emerged as more than an affliction. I can see it now as an indispensable energy in the shaping of my identity...my productive sensibilities, my love of contemplation, my honesty about life's troubles, my willingness to endure confusion and discover solutions...The morbidity of sorrow--not cultivated sorrow, but that which comes inevitably--is often a productive sluggishness, a time when the soul slows down, too weary to go on, and takes stock of where it's been and where it's going. During these gloomy pauses, we often discover parts of ourselves we never knew we possessed, talents that, properly activated, enrich our lives." (pp. 170, 172)

So, lead your morbid curiosity this way to discover the light underlying the darkness. But, be prepared, once you start reading, it'll be hard to look away.

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Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck: Why We Can't Look Away, by Eric G. Wilson PDF
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^^ PDF Download Lorca: A Dream of Life, by Leslie Stainton

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A magnificent and astonishingly vivid biography of one of the century's premier poets.

With a rare blend of grace and scholarship, Leslie Stainton raises the stakes of our appreciation for the greatest of Spain's modern poets, Federico Garca Lorca. Drawing on fourteen years of research; more than a hundred letters previously unknown to biographers; exclusive interviews with Lorca's friends, family, and acquaintances; and newly discovered archival material, Stainton has brought her subject to life as few biographers can. She describes his carefree childhood in rural Andalusia; his life in Madrid and Granada, then in New York, Havana, and Buenos Aires; his potent relationships with other Spanish artists, such as Salvador Dal, Luis Buuel, and Manuel de Falla; and, finally, his marginal political involvement in the Spanish Civil War that nonetheless cost him his life.

Lorca exasperated his family for years with his "idleness," but he captivated his many admirers through his charisma, passion, and artistic genius. Deeply divided, Lorca grappled with issues of class, culture, and identity-he struggled to come to terms with his homosexuality, and Stainton shows how that struggle informed his work.

Throughout, Stainton meticulously relates the oeuvre to the life. Her biography will quickly become the standard one-volume work on the poet.

• Sales Rank: #649026 in Books
• Published on: 1999-07
• Ingredients: Example Ingredients
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.75" h x 6.50" w x 1.75" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 579 pages

Amazon.com Review
Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) was not yet 40 when he was executed by Falangists during the Spanish Civil War, yet he already towered over literature in Spain. He was arguably his generation's greatest poet and playwright. Although Lorca was best known in his lifetime for works like Gypsy Ballads and Blood Wedding, which expressed the soulful intensity of his native Andalusia, this well-researched, probing biography reminds readers that he was both cosmopolitan and unpredictable as an artist and a man. Despite his privileged background, Lorca was "a poet of the people who viewed poetry as something that walks along the streets," someone who wrote as naturally as he breathed and loved music and drawing nearly as much as poetry and drama. Leslie Stainton, an American scholar who lived in Spain for several years while researching this book, perceptively analyzes Lorca's homosexuality, his left-wing political views, and his artistic convictions, painting an intriguing picture of a man whose strong feelings and beliefs were tempered by a dislike of being pinned down. Though judiciously critical in evaluating Lorca's work, the author conveys with force her appreciation of his ability to forge new language for the exploration of age-old themes: "the capriciousness of time, the impossibility of love, the phantoms of identity, art, childhood, sex, and death." --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly
Federico Garc!a Lorca called the fatal goring of a bullfighter friend "an apprenticeship for my own death." More because of his homosexuality than his openly sexual poems and plays, or his moderate leftist politics, he expected right-wing retribution. It came in August 1936, when he was arrested, despite being sheltered in the house of a well-known fascist family, and was promptly executed by Franco's devout murderers. His body has never been found. He left behind, unproduced, three plays, among them his greatest, The House of Bernarda Alba. He also left, unpublished, three poetry collections. Stainton's biography traces the trajectory of his doomed lifeAhis years of apparent idleness, supported by an indulgent and prosperous father who counted upon his son's inevitable fame; his coming to terms with, and then flaunting, his sexual orientation; his burgeoning fame as poet and playwright; his conflicts with the church and with the political authorities over what he said and how he said it. His relations with Neruda, Dal!, Benavente, Bu?uel and de Falls, among others, are explored, often from heretofore unexploited documentation. Lorca's great creative achievements are a bit muted here, perhaps because so many of his 42 years were spent in incubation rather than productivity, and perhaps also because so many pages explore his grappling with his sexuality and his subsequent glorifying of it. In Stainton's telling, however, Lorca's artistic development, and his struggles with interfering forces form a dramatic and powerful story. 68 b&w illustrations.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Finally, a straightforward biography of the greatest Spanish poet of this century that chronicles his day-to-day life and includes his homosexual dimension, so assiduously concealed by generations of his admirers. In a career of less than two decades, Lorca produced nine books of verse and 13 plays that revitalized some of Spain's basic literary strains: ballad, sonnet, tragedy, and farce. His themes explore the unattainability of love, the phantoms of identity, the creation of art, and aspects of childhood, sex, and death. He was a declamatory poet who preferred a live audience to the renown of publication, and despite his plain looks and rotundity he had a magnetic stage presence. Aware that he lacked the confrontational instinct to take sides politically, Lorca believed that literature needed to be apolitical in order to effect social change less abrasively. Yet his murder by Franco supporters in 1936 was politically motivated. Lorca scholar Stainton draws on a cache of newly discovered letters and archival material to breathe vigorous life into her subject. Highly recommended.AJack Shreve, Allegany Coll. of Maryland, Cumberland
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Most helpful customer reviews

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Character
By foxx
An excellent well documented book on this larger than life character.
His untimely death came as a bit of a shock to me personally, his creativity snuffed out by another petty dictator.
But as always with creative people their legacy never dies. An excellent read

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
A thorough if exhausting academic surveillance
By Grady Harp
Don't let the title of LORCA: A DREAM OF LIFE fool you into thinking that this book is about the fantasies that wove the character of the great Spanish writer/artist. This is a well researched document that should be an essential volume in all libraries. There is much to be learned here: how many Americans understand the magnitude of the Spanish American War which resulted in skeletonizing the empire of Spain, annexing the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico to the US? It is this era of defeat into which Lorca was born - author Stainton begins her book this way and continues the entire biography uniting the changes in Lorca's development as an artist with the political upheavals of WWI and WWII. This history in context technique at times absorbs too many pages, giving us less information about the soul of the subject than about the country of the subject.
Given this direction as her modus operandi, Stainton still manages to illuminate the works of Lorca and even has the courage to tackle his sexuality and the consequent influences on his work. While other biographers have given us a more fleshed out image of one of the truly great writers of the 20th century, LORCA: A DREAM LIFE is written with consummate attention to detail and enlightens us as to the milieu which contributed to the intensity of experiences tha shaped Lorca's output. This is definitely a good read and recommended to round out your understanding of Lorca's Spain and Spirit.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
Lorca: An authoritative biography
By Sunil Govinnage
The editor, Leslie Stainton must be given due credit for taking such painful details to record García Lorca's life in this full-scale authoritative biography. It provides very intimate details of Lorca's life from his childhood to tragic death. It contains detailed accounts of his life, travels, writing and other intimate details which have been craftily captured by Stainton.
The bonus of the book is pictures of Lorca, his family and friends. It includes very rare pictures from Lorca's childhood to his adult life. One picture taken in 1899 shows Lorca when he was just one year old. Another picture shows Lorca in Arab dress taken in 1918. In this context it records rare pictures of this poet-playwright who electrified his audiences until a Fascist firing squad killed him in 1936. Leslie Stainton captures this sad but fascinating life of Lorca whose life itself is like a drama he wrote. The book places Lorca in a cultural and historical context providing unusual insights into his life and major works.
A must read for anyone interested in Lorca's life and work.

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^ Fee Download The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American Music, by Dunstan Prial

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A "behind the music" story without parallel
John Hammond is one of the most charismatic figures in American music, a man who put on record much of the music we cherish today. Dunstan Prial's biography presents Hammond's life as a gripping story of music, money, fame, and racial conflict, played out in the nightclubs and recording studios where the music was made.
A pioneering producer and talent spotter, Hammond discovered and championed some of the most gifted musicians of early jazz—Billie Holliday, Count Basie, Charlie Christian, Benny Goodman--and staged the legendary "From Spirituals to Swing" concert at Carnegie Hall in 1939, which established jazz as America's indigenous music. Then as jazz gave way to pop and rock Hammond repeated the trick, discovering Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Ray Vaughan in his life's extraordinary second act.
Dunstan Prial shows Hammond's life to be an effort to push past his privileged upbringing and encounter American society in all its rough-edged vitality. A Vanderbilt on his mother's side, Hammond grew up in a mansion on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. As a boy, he would sneak out at night and go uptown to Harlem to hear jazz in speakeasies. As a young man, he crusaded for racial equality in the music world and beyond. And as a Columbia Records executive—a dapper figure behind the glass of the recording studio or in a crowded nightclub—he saw music as the force that brought whites and blacks together and expressed their shared sense of life's joys and sorrows. This first biography of John Hammond is also a vivid and up-close account of great careers in the making: Bob Dylan recording his first album with Hammond for $402, Bruce Springsteen showing up at Hammond's office carrying a beat-up acoustic guitar without a case. In Hammond's life, the story of American music is at once personal and epic: the story of a man at the center of things, his ears wide open.

• Sales Rank: #776150 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-27
• Released on: 2006-06-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 1.31" h x 6.70" w x 9.42" l,
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Built upon interviews with musicians, family and colleagues, this admiring biography delivers a solid portrait of the famed 20th-century critic, journalist and producer. Known for his square crew cut, protuberant eyes and toothy grin, the sometimes arrogant, blues-loving Vanderbilt heir "seemed to know what America wanted to hear before America knew it," writes first-time author Prial. Besides recording Bessie Smith's last studio sessions and Billie Holiday's first, Hammond is the nudge that gets Count Basie to leave Kansas City and the driving force behind Benny Goodman's decision to integrate his band by adding black vibraphonist Lionel Hampton—all this roughly two decades before he signs Bob Dylan to Columbia Records. Prial's sedulous work pays off in the consistency of his narrative. His even-toned, chronological book is light on anecdotes, but his smart use of music histories, jazz autobiographies and Hammond's own Downbeat and Melody Maker writings results in an impressive and authoritative text. Moreover, Prial's insights into Hammond's youth and two marriages transform his work from the tale of a jazz buff with money into an engaging study of a man with two obsessions—"making music and promoting social reform." (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
A silver-spoon baby who felt the noblesse oblige and acted on it, John Hammond (1910-87) was, through his mother's family, a Vanderbilt. Fascinated in childhood by the family's black employees' music, he had by his midteens found Harlem, where he heard musicians who became international stars. Ditching Yale for jazz journalism and record production, he launched or boosted Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, and Charlie Christian and began lifelong agitation for racial justice, starting with schemes to integrate jazz that bore famous fruit in Goodman's small groups with Teddy Wilson and Lionel Hampton and the Carnegie Hall concert "From Spirituals to Swing." Long Columbia Records and NAACP tenures enabled him to remain a star maker--Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen were later finds--and a social shaker after swing's demise. Attracting readers is done for Prial by the famous names Hammond's story obliges him to drop, and he neither probes Hammond's class-based arrogance and self-absorption nor more than hints at Hammond's personal financial decline. Still, this is gratifying reading for American pop mavens. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"The extraordinary John Hammond has long needed a good biography. This is it." --Pete Seeger

"John Hammond must be grinning in his grave, because Dunstan Prial has brought back to life for 21st-century readers the man who animated much of the 20th century's greatest music. The Producer does justice not only to Hammond's legendary role in instigating and integrating American music, but also to his indefatigable efforts on behalf of civil rights and labor unions. To read this book is to bask, once again, in Hammond's toothy smile and marvel at his enthusiasm and insight." --Ken Emerson, author of Doo-Dah!: Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture and Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era.

Most helpful customer reviews

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
informative and enjoyable telling of Hammond's life
By Mark S. Crawford
From his love of music, to his activism in Civil Rights, John Hammond's life could be made into a mini-series! This biography is an informative and enjoyable read about Hammond's life. With that said, I didn't find it vastly different than Hammond's autobiography (John Hammond on Record). I'm not sure which book - the bio or the autobio - came out first, but I happened to read the autobiography first and found it to be more detailed and personable. Whichever you read first, you're sure to be impressed with what Hammond was able to accomplish in his lifetime. It's a shame he's not better known to the general public.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
interesting and well written
By Doreen Haarmann
My only negative comment is perhaps some repetitiveness in some of the comments in the book. Otherwise I thoroughly enjoyed it. I like biographies in general. This is a must read for people interested in the music business. Mr. Hammond was an interesting character and a man who stood up for what he believed in. He loved jazz, and fought for racial equality. It is amazing how many different artists he was instrumental in promoting over the years.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
A distant but still interesting account of John Hammond
By Rex Chickeneater
John Hammond was a key figure in American popular music, bring diverse talents such as Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Ray Vaughn, to widespread audiences. He also helped promote entire categories of music, including jazz, blues, and folk, contributing significantly to the popular revivals of these fields. Duston Prial's biography is insightful, based on careful research in libraries and through interviews. The book is well written, and it will be an important document in maintaining Hammond's well deserved reputation as a cultural icon.

Hammond, however, appears as a somewhat distant character in Prial's account. One never really gets a sense of John Hammond's inner, subjective sense. Prial at times seems more concerned with pointing out where Hammond errored in his own autobiography -- "John Hammond on Record" (written with Irving Townsend and published in 1977) -- such as in the case of the reported causes of singer Bessie Smith's death. Prial fails to consider that Hammond actually may have believed (or internalized after so many retellings) the accounts that attributed her death to racist treatment following a car accident. Instead, Prial tells us, "The whole episode was an unseemly case of Hammond's not allowing the facts to get in the way of his good story."

In some cases it in the book it is not clear why Prial favors one version of events over another. The classic example is his account of Bob Dylan's trying to get out of his Columbia records contract. Readers interested in this incident should compare the richly insightful if brief account given by Hammond in his autobiography with Prial's retelling. These quibbles aside, Prial's book makes for enjoyable reading.

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