64 results for "History"

Love, Sex, Fear, Death The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment

Adam Parfrey,Timothy R. Wyllie
The Process Church of the Final Judgment was the apocalyptic shadow side of the flower-powered '60s and perhaps the most notorious cult of modern times. Hundreds of black-cloaked devotees, often wearing a satanic Goat of Mendes and a swastika-like mandala, swept the streets of London, New York, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, and Toronto, selling magazines and books with titles like Fear and Humanity is the Devil. And within the group's Chapters, members would participate in Midnight Meditations beneath photographs of the Christ-like leader. Celebrities like Marianne Faithful, James Coburn, and Mick Jagger participated in Process publications, and Funkadelic, in its Maggot Brain album, reprinted Process' Fear Issue. Process' Death Issue interviewed the freshly-imprisoned Charles Manson leading to conspiracy hysteria in such books as Ed Sanders' The Family and Maury Terry's The Ultimate Evil. A lawsuit against Sanders' Manson book led to the removal of its Process-themed chapter by Dutton. Love, Sex, Fear, Death is the shocking, surprising, and secretive inside story of the Process Church, which later transformed into Foundation Faith of the Millennium, and most recently as the Utah-based animal sanctuary, Best Friends. Included will be text by Timothy R. Wyllie, a formative member of the Process and Foundation Faith organizations; interviews with other former Processeans; rare reproductions of Process magazines; never-before-seen photographs; and fascinating transcripts from holy books and legal actions. The special limited edition will be hardcover, signed, numbered, and slipcased, and will include a facsimile edition of the notorious Death Issue.
Feral House 2009-07 380 pages

Henry Rollins

Henry Rollins
These interviews with Henry Rollins conducted by RE/Search (and Search & Destroy) founder V. Vale focus on Henry's travels -- often to countries considered dangerous and off-limits. There are references to Punk Rock history, the Occupy movement, and numerous personal adventures and experiences over the past 30-plus years of combing the planet giving musical and Spoken Word performances, and generally being as creative and humorous as possible no matter what the situation may be . Whatever Henry wants to do, he does it while giving his full attention, like a kind of Zen master. RE/Search tries to reveal the full scope of his creativity, achievements and darkly sardonic perceptiveness and contempt for cliche. This book is full of both humor and inspiration.
RE/Search Publications 2012 124 pages

The culture of the Cold War

Whitfield, Stephen J.
"Without the Cold War, what's the point of being an American?" As if in answer to this poignant question from John Updike's Rabbit at Rest , Stephen Whitfield examines the impact of the Cold War—and its dramatic ending—on American culture in an updated version of his highly acclaimed study. In a new epilogue to this second edition, he extends his analysis from the McCarthyism of the 1950s, including its effects on the American and European intelligensia, to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and beyond. Whitfield treats his subject matter with the eye of a historian, reminding the reader that the Cold War is now a thing of the past. His treatment underscores the importance of the Cold War to our national identity and forces the reader to ask, Where do we go from here? The question is especially crucial for the Cold War historian, Whitfield argues. His new epilogue is partly a guide for new historians to tackle the complexities of Cold War studies.
Johns Hopkins University Press 1996-05-19 275 pages

Heretic's heart: a journey through spirit & revolution

Adler, Margot
Adler was a young woman determined to be taken seriously and to be an agent of change - on her own terms, free from dogma and authoritarian constraints. From campus activism at the University of California at Berkeley to civil-rights work in Mississippi, from antiwar protests to observing the socialist revolution in Cuba, she found those chances in the 1960s. Heretic's Heart illuminates the events, ideas, passions, and ecstatic commitments of the decade like no other memoir.
Beacon Press 1997 309 pages

In search of American Jewish culture

Whitfield, Stephen J.
In drama and in musical comedy, in popular song and in symphonic music, in movies and in literature, Jews have contributed to American culture in the 20th century to a degree out of all proportion to their numbers. But does this vast creative output coalesce into something identifiable as an American Jewish culture? Stephen J. Whitfield answers this question with a resounding "yes!" Whitfield focuses on areas where the specifically Jewish contribution has been little explored. He surveys such fields as popular music, musical theater, and drama, focusing on key figures from Jerome Kern and the Gershwins to Stephen Sondheim and Jerome Robbins; Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland to Irving Berlin and Bob Dylan; Arthur Miller and Lillian Hellman to David Mamet and Wendy Wasserstein. At the same time, Whitfield tackles the complex issue of race and American Jewish culture, tracing the extensive interpenetrations of Jewish and African American music. He also offers a stunning examination of Jewish American representations of the Holocaust, focusing on stage and film adaptations of Anne Frank's Diary and on Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List. In a poignant, final chapter, Whitfield ponders the future of American Jewish culture after a century of assimilationist pressure and mainstream success. The distinctive culture that he has traced through the 20th century, Whitfield concludes, may finally become submerged and lost. Only a renewed emphasis on Judaism itself, he believes, offers the hope for American Jews to maintain the dual cultural identities that they have so long succeeded in nurturing --
University Press of New England 2001 333 pages

The popular arts

Hall, Stuart,Whannel, Paddy
When it first appeared in 1964, Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel's The Popular Arts opened up an almost unprecedented field of analysis and inquiry into contemporary popular culture. Counter to the prevailing views of the time, Hall and Whannel recognized popular culture's social importance and considered it worthy of serious study. In their analysis of everything from Westerns and the novels of Mickey Spillane, Ian Fleming, and Raymond Chandler to jazz, advertising, and the television industry, they were guided by the belief that studying popular culture demanded an ethical evaluation of the text and full attention to its properties. In so doing, they raised questions about the relation of culture to society and the politics of taste and judgment in ways that continue to shape cultural studies. Long out of print, this landmark text highlights the development of Hall's theoretical and methodological approach while adding a greater understanding of his work. This edition also includes a new introduction by Richard Dyer, who contextualizes The Popular Arts within the history of cultural studies and outlines its impact and enduring legacy.
Duke University Press 2018-07-06 398 pages

Strangeland: how Britain stopped making sense

Sopel, Jon
From Jon Sopel, bestselling author and presenter of hit podcast The News Agents , comes an incisive examination of post-Brexit Britain and what it means for our future. 'I like and trust Jon Sopel and you should too' JOE LYCETT 'A thrilling, nerve-wracking book. You couldn't make the last ten years up; thanks to Jon Sopel, you don't have to' PETER FRANKOPAN 'A hugely entertaining and quite traumatic rollercoaster' ARMANDO IANNUCCI 'Acute and unflinching - Sopel deploys his foreign correspondent skills on home shores as well as far ones, and brings together the story of a tumultuous few years on both sides of the Atlantic' MISHAL HUSAIN Returning to the UK in some ways has been disconcerting - or maybe discombobulating would be a better word. It is, after all, my home; it is where I grew up, a country I love and am proud of. But either it' s changed, or I have. Maybe both. It just feels like a strange land. After eight years of political reporting in the US, Jon Sopel returned home to the UK to find a very different place than the one he left. In his first book since launching the global hit podcast The News Agents , Jon explores what has happened to the country he once knew. Either Britain has changed dramatically, or he has. Perhaps it' s both. As a second Trump administration begins, and a new chapter of American history exerts its influence over our own isle, Strangeland paints an unforgettable portrait of a country gone through the looking glass.
Ebury Press 2025-05-29 352 pages

Hidden rhythms: schedules and calendars in social life

Zerubavel, Eviatar
"A pathbreaking book on an important subject which, surprisingly, has been paid little attention by social scientists. Zerubavel writes with both learning and lucidity. His book is a pleasure to read." -Peter Berger "Others have written about the structuring of time, but few so insightfully and compellingly as Zerubavel." -Neil J. Smelser "This is a jewel of a book, one of the most important contributions to cultural sociology in recent years. Professor Zerubavel's easy blend of history, religion, science, politics, and social values makes this a study a delightful voyage of unexpected discovery and new awareness. It hink the title has misled some people into thinking this is a book on music or something of the sort. All the more reason to rejoice at this reissue in paperback." -David S. Landes "Hidden Rhythms is an exciting study of a subject that has net yet gained the attention it deserves among sociologists and other social scientists . . . Zerubavel's book has the distinctive merit to discuss earlier approaches to the study of schedules and calendars and to add a series of extremely shrewd observations and calendars to add a series of extremely shrewd observations of his own on the sociology of time. His work seems indispensable for all those social scientists who have become conscious of the central position of the temporal dimension in the life of people and their society." -Lewis A. Coser "Eviatar Zerubavel's Hidden Rhythms is an original and highly imaginative analysis of the role time schedule plays in social life. Continuing the distinctive focus on social time Zerubavel develops in Patterns of Time in Hospital life, he provides in Hidden Rhythms more penetrating and profound analysis of the subtle and diverse significance of time in organizing our social relationships and lives. A joy to read." -Peter M. Blau
University of California press 1985-11-03 201 pages

The Eastern Stars How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Macoris

Mark Kurlansky
"A fantastic social history" from the author of Salt and Cod ( USA Today ) In the Dominican Republic town of San Pedro de Macorís, baseball is often seen as the only way to a better life. For those who make it, the million-dollar paychecks from Major League Baseball mean that not only they, but their entire families as well, have been saved from grinding poverty. The successful few set an example that dazzles the neighbors they left behind. But for the majority, this dream is illusory. In The Eastern Stars, New York Times bestselling author Mark Kurlansky reveals the connection between two countries' love affair with a sport, and the remarkable journey of impoverished San Pedro and its baseball players-including Rico Carty, Albert Pujols, Robinson Canó, Sammy Sosa, and Alfonso Soriano-who have sought freedom from poverty through playing ball.
Penguin 2011-04-05 352 pages

Living in the eighties

Gil Troy,Vincent J. Cannato
Some see the 1980s as a Golden Age, a "Morning in America" when Ronald Reagan revived America's economy, reoriented American politics, and restored Americans' faith in their country and in themselves. Others see the 1980s as a new "Gilded Age," an era that was selfish, superficial, glitzy, greedy, divisive, and destructive. This multifaceted exploration of the 1980s brings together a variety of voices from different political persuasions, generations, and vantage points. The volume features work by Reagan critics and Reagan fans (including one of President Reagan's closest aides, Ed Meese), by historians who think the 1980s were a disastrous time, those who think it was a glorious time, and those who see both the blessings and the curses of the decade. Their essays examine everything from multiculturalism, Southern conservatism, and Reaganomics, to music culture, religion, crime, AIDS, and the city. A complex, thoughtful account of a watershed in our recent history, this volume will engage anyone interested in this pivotal decade.
Oxford University Press 2009-10-22 212 pages

Finitude's score: essays for the end of the millennium

Ronell, Avital
Suspending the distinction between headline news and high theory, Avital Ronell examines the diverse figures of finitude in our modernity: war, guerrilla video, trauma TV, AIDS, music, divorce, sadism, electronic tagging, rumor. Her essays address such questions as, How do rumors kill? How has video become the conscience of TV? How have the police come to be everywhere, even where they are not? Is peace possible? “[W]riting to the community of those who have no community—to those who have known the infiniteness of abandonment,” her work explores the possibility, one possibility among many, that “this time we have gone too far”: “One last word. It is possible that we have gone too far. This possibility has to be considered if we, as a species, as a history, are going to get anywhere at all.”
University of Nebraska Press 1994 368 pages

Paul Krassner's Impolite interviews

Krassner, Paul
Krassner's Impolite Interviews delivers 21 of the most compelling encounters you will ever witness, from a 1959 interview with author Alan Watts to Timothy Leary in 1995 just weeks before he died, from Norman Mailer talking about sex to Jerry Garcia recounting what it was like to play the Pyramids. Each interview gives a unique take on major issues: Communism, segregation, the Cold War, the sexual revolution, the drug culture, by major personalities. Impolite Interviews presents perspectives as diverse as George Lincoln Rockwell (then head of the American Nazi Party) and spiritual master Ram Dass. Krassner offers readers an illuminating look at some of the most important figures of the second half of this century through the eyes of one of this era's most innovative journalists.
Seven Stories Press 1999-09-07 340 pages

Haunted in the New World: Jewish American culture from Cahan to The Goldbergs

Weber, Donald
Discusses Jewish identity in America as reflected in the culture of immigrants and descendants of immigrants. Self-hatred or, at least, ambivalence about oneself in the face of native American values is one theme. Ch. 5 (pp. 98-125), "To Make 'a Jew': Projecting Antisemitism in Post-War America", analyzes two novels - Arthur Miller's "Focus" and Saul Bellow's "The Victim" - that explore the psychosocial dimensions of postwar antisemitism. They raise the question whether possibilities of Jewish-Gentile relations might lead to personal and social renovation. In "Focus", a crypto-fascist antisemite who has internalized racist stereotypes finally identifies symbolically as a Jew. In "The Victim", both Jew and Gentile partially overcome their mutual stereotyping. The main Jewish protagonist also overcomes some negative aspects of his self-image.
Indiana University Press 2005-06-08 250 pages

The transformational decade: snapshots of a decade from 9/11 to the Obama presidency

London, Herbert I.
"The Transformational Decade shows the transformation that took place in American life from the attack on the World Trade Center to the emergence of the Obama presidency. It is not a strict history, but rather snapshots of a decade that has fundamentally altered perceptions of the United States. In some respects, this book is modeled after Frederick Lewis Allen's Only Yesterday and Since Yesterday, acclaimed books that sought to capture the spirit of the 1920s and '30s. London sees the period from 2001 to 2008 as "post yesterday," a period that broke with the past, challenged the essence of the free market, and contested America's role on the world stage. In an effort to limn these snapshots from recent history, London has written several "decade" books: The Overheated Decade, The Counterfeit Decade, and The Decade of Denial. This book, The Transformational Decade, differs in that it represents a separation from the past. London illuminates a decade that he considers to be a new and more frightful period than any in recent American history."--Publisher's website.
University Press of America, Inc 2012-05-14 177 pages

Gilligan unbound: pop culture in the age of globalization

Cantor, Paul A.
"In Gilligan Unbound, a distinguished Shakespeare scholar and literary critic proves once and for all that popular culture can be every bit as complex, meaningful, and provocative as the most celebrated works of literature - and a lot more fun. Paul Cantor analyzes and interprets a wide variety of classic television programs with the same seriousness, care, and creativity he would Hamlet or Macbeth to reveal how dramatically America's image of itself has evolved from the 1960s to the present." "Cantor demonstrates how, during the 1960s, Gilligan's Island and Star Trek reflected America's faith in liberal democracy and our willingness to project it universally. Gilligan's Island, Cantor argues, is based on the premise that a representative group of Americans could literally be dumped in the middle of nowhere and still prevail under the worst of circumstances. Star Trek took American optimism even further by trying to make the entire galaxy safe for democracy. Despite the famous Prime Directive, Captain Kirk and his crew remade planet after planet in the image of an idealized 1960s America." -- From publisher's website.
Rowman & Littlefield 2001 255 pages