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› Find signed collectible books: 'Absolute Beginners'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Armies of the Night: History As a Novel, the Novel As History'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Beat Book'
Here is an unusually diverse collection of Beat voices, including not only Kerouac, Burroughs, and Ginsberg, but Amiri Baraka, Gregory Corso, Diane di Prima, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joanne Kyger, Michael McClure, Peter Orlovsky, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen. Also included are short biographies of the writers and a "Literary Guide to Beat Places" around the world. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Beatles: Illustrated Lyrics'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Boutique: A 60's Cultural Phenomenon'
The emergence of the boutique came about in the early 1960s against a backdrop of social upheaval. For the first time, high fashion became available to the young, the attractive and the "cool". As a venue for customers to meet, gossip and entertain friends, the boutique was pivotal in stimulating a new interest in self-image and representation. Here, fashion expert Marnie Fogg explores the social, cultural and creative ramifications of the boutique phenomenon. Nine chapters cover the key aspects of the scene, Mary Quant, the new fashion magazines, and the rise of Carnaby Street. All of the major protagonists of the time are included, from Barbara Hulanicki of Biba, Sir Paul Smith, Celia Birtwell and John Bates, to their contemporary models, photographers and fashion editors. "Boutique" should appeal as a resource to fashion and '60s experts and enthusiasts, and to the cultural historian. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Chicago '68'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Confessions of a Maddog: A Romp Through the High-Flying Texas Music and Literary Era of the Fifties to the Seventies'
Maddog Inc. was a loose confederation of Texas writers and "picker poets," as Jay Milner calls them, whose heydey lasted from the late 1950s to about the mid-'70s. This self-conscious gaggle of merrymakers (the group even had an official Maddog membership card) frequently got together to party through the nights and days.
The merry pranksters he fell in with included the likes of Billy Lee Brammer, Bud Shrake, Gary Cartwright, Dan Jenkins, Larry L. King, Pete Gent and (to an extent, though only peripherally, it appears) Larry McMurtry. The singers and songwriters were Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Guy Clark, Billy Joe Shaver and others.
I highly recommend Confessions of a Maddog, especially for those such as myself who are a bit younger than the author's generation of Texas writers but have heard tell of their legendary exploits. The Dallas Morning News, Tom Pilkington, January 3, 1999.
In the 1960's and '70s, a number of Texas writers began emerging as significant comers on the literary landscape. They were, for the most part, a rambunctious and talented lot who worked hard and played harder, and before they got too old to socialize till sunrise--among them, Larry L. King, Dan Jenkins, Bud Shrake, Gary Cartwright and Billie Lee Brammer--they left an indelible imprint on the world of letters in Texas and beyond. They and some of their friends called themselves Maddog Inc.--a label that, given the culture of the times, seemed entirely fitting to their unequivocal disregard for restraint.
Fort Worth resident, Jay Milner, a native of West Texas, was one of the Maddogs. A former reporter and writer for the esteemed New York Herald Tribune, he published a well-regarded novel, Incident at Ashton, before returning to Texas in 1961 to teach journalism, including duty at TCU and SMU. In Milner's new book, Confessions of a Maddog, published by the University of North Texas Press, Milner recounts the lives, loves and losses of his good friends and fellow writers. From Editor's Note preceding four page excerpt in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, November 15, 1998.
A writer is someone who puts his thoughts into words. Jay Milner has a way of putting everyone's thoughts into words. He knows where he is, therefore, he is able to position everything around him in relation to himself, which seems to be a good spot. His insight into the mental stumblings of an entertainer are uncanny. Maybe it's because he is also an entertainer. In other words and on the other hand and in addition to it all, out of a possible ten, Jay Milner is a twelve.--Willie Nelson
"When I first met Jay Milner, dinosaurs and the one-and-only original Hank Williams were a long time dead; John F. Kennedy and William Faulkner only recently so. Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Jackie Gleason, Red Foley, Chet Huntley and a rowdy bunch of hard-drinking, pot-smoking, lady-chasing Texas writers--many of whom make appearances in this book--were alive and semi-well. So were our dreams--collectively and individually--of soon running Norman Mailer out of town, embarrassing Kurt Vonnegut into retirement and reducing Saul Bellow to full-time school teaching. It didn't exactly happen that way, but my-oh-my didn't we have a good time trying?" Larry L. King. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Drumming at the Edge of Magic: A Journey into the Spirit of Percussion'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Edie: An American Biography'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Edie: An American Biography'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El Lobo Estepario'
Student edition, Nobel prize winner 1947 [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Family'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Fiction of the Past: The Sixties in American History'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Further Inquiry'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jack of Jumps'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'James Baldwin'
A novelist, essayist, playwright, and public intellectual, James Baldwin's writings on the subject of race in America undeniably made him one of the greatest African American writers of the 20th century. As the civil rights movement gained momentum in the two decades following World War II, Baldwin landed squarely in the public eye, and his prose communicated the hope and frustration of the fight for racial equality. In James Baldwin: Early Novels and Stories, editor Toni Morrison draws heavily on Baldwin's early work, including his first novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, as well as Giovanni's Room, which was praised by the New York Times for its "unusual candor ... and intensity." As pertinent today as it was some 30 years ago, the fiction found in this collection is powerful, eloquent, and a fitting tribute to a consummate writer. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Last of Her Kind'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lennon Remembers'
Over 30 years after their acrimonious split, it is undeniable that The Beatles were much more than a regular pop group; they represented a cultural phenomenon of the 20th-century. For the Fab Four themselves, the immediate aftermath of the band became a time for soul searching and reasserting the individuality once submerged within "The Beatles". Lennon Remembers, an extended transcript of the legendary 1970 interview between Rolling Stone magazine's Jann Wenner and John Lennon reveals this process at its most painful, angry and bitter.
Now re-edited to incorporate previously deleted passages (many of which consist of less-than-vital comments from Lennon's then-permanent companion Yoko Ono), Lennon Remembers sees the 30-year-old ex-Beatle determinedly shattering what he saw as the "myth" of his former group. From their clean-cut image ("[our tours] were like Fellini's Satyricon"), to the reasons for their split ("We were fed up of being sidemen for Paul"), and revelations of his drug abuse ("We were full of junk"), Lennon's anger burns from every page.
While undeniably entertaining, the force of Lennon's claims can also make uncomfortable reading. As Yoko Ono herself notes in her introduction, Wenner's interview sees an insecure Lennon, hitting back "and doing a bad job of it". Indeed, his bitterness and anger often leads to personal attacks on such former friends as Brian Epstein, George Harrison and, most hurtfully, Paul McCartney, that are almost unforgivably cruel. However, throughout there remain hints of an abiding respect for his former musical and personal partners. Indeed hints of the old-gang mentality are revealed as he comments at one stage, "I can knock The Beatles"--his implication that others should have more respect suggesting a pride in the group's achievements that is elsewhere buried beneath the weight of bitter reminiscence.
Thankfully, however, despite his tirade, Lennon's humour and humanity is never far from the surface, and it is this that makes Wenner's interview such an ultimately rewarding read. Lennon Remembers is recommended to all, not least as a revealing accompaniment to the more sanitised version of events given in the group's own "autobiography", The Beatles Anthology. --Steve Price [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lennon Remembers'
Over 30 years after their acrimonious split, it is undeniable that The Beatles were much more than a regular pop group; they represented a cultural phenomenon of the 20th-century. For the Fab Four themselves, the immediate aftermath of the band became a time for soul searching and reasserting the individuality once submerged within "The Beatles". Lennon Remembers, an extended transcript of the legendary 1970 interview between Rolling Stone magazine's Jann Wenner and John Lennon reveals this process at its most painful, angry and bitter.
Now re-edited to incorporate previously deleted passages (many of which consist of less-than-vital comments from Lennon's then-permanent companion Yoko Ono), Lennon Remembers sees the 30-year-old ex-Beatle determinedly shattering what he saw as the "myth" of his former group. From their clean-cut image ("[our tours] were like Fellini's Satyricon"), to the reasons for their split ("We were fed up of being sidemen for Paul"), and revelations of his drug abuse ("We were full of junk"), Lennon's anger burns from every page.
While undeniably entertaining, the force of Lennon's claims can also make uncomfortable reading. As Yoko Ono herself notes in her introduction, Wenner's interview sees an insecure Lennon, hitting back "and doing a bad job of it". Indeed, his bitterness and anger often leads to personal attacks on such former friends as Brian Epstein, George Harrison and, most hurtfully, Paul McCartney, that are almost unforgivably cruel. However, throughout there remain hints of an abiding respect for his former musical and personal partners. Indeed hints of the old-gang mentality are revealed as he comments at one stage, "I can knock The Beatles"--his implication that others should have more respect suggesting a pride in the group's achievements that is elsewhere buried beneath the weight of bitter reminiscence.
Thankfully, however, despite his tirade, Lennon's humour and humanity is never far from the surface, and it is this that makes Wenner's interview such an ultimately rewarding read. Lennon Remembers is recommended to all, not least as a revealing accompaniment to the more sanitised version of events given in the group's own "autobiography", The Beatles Anthology. --Steve Price [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Linda McCartney'
Featuring never before published interviews with Linda and Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney: A Portrait is an insiders look at one of rock music's most enduring marriages, and an intimate portrait of Linda herself and of her over thirty-year friendship with Danny Fields.
When Linda married Paul she instantly found herself the focus of the intense scorn and envy of millions of women around the world - women who hoped and prayed her relationship to their beloved Beatle Paul would not last. But it did last for nearly thirty years. Reviled and dismissed at first, Linda withstood the pressures of fame, fortune, and intense public scrutiny to make her own lasting contribution to the world as an artist, author, animal rights activist, and businesswoman. Her death in 1998 of breast cancer sent shock waves throughout the world, and a collective grief at her passing is an ironic counterpart to the contempt that greeted the news of her marriage to Paul.
Included are interviews with members of Wings and stories from friends, family, and stars of the rock world. Linda McCartney: A Portrait is Field's poignant remembrance and fond farewell to his lifelong friend. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Looking Back: A Chronicle of Growing Up Old in the Sixties'
First published in 1973, when its author was nineteen years old, Looking Back: A Chronicle of Growing Up Old in the Sixties has become a classic to many of the baby boom generation, for its sharply observed account of coming of age during turbulent times. Now used in many high school English and social studies courses, this new edition is being brought out to mark the 30th anniversary of the publication of the original, not only for those of Maynard's generation, but to make available, to the current generation of young readers in particular, a work that may inspire them to give shape to their experiences of growing up, and as a reminder that a person is never too young to tell his or her own story. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Love Germ'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Molly Chronicles: Serotonin Serenade'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'New York in the Sixties'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Planet Drum: A Celebration of Percussion and Rhythm'
Mickey Hart's dazzling companion to his bestselling Drumming at the Edge of Magic is a captivating chronicle of our global fascination with drums and the primal rhythms and spells of percussion, dramatically illustrated with 350 photographs and illustrations, 200 in full color.ra tour. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Popism: The Warhol '60s'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Popism: The Warhol Sixties'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Portable Sixties Reader'
From civil rights to free love, JFK to LSD, Woodstock to the Moonwalk, the Sixties was a time of change, political unrest, and radical experiments in the arts, sexuality, and personal identity. In this anthology of more than one hundred selections of essays, poetry, and fiction by some of Americas most gifted writers, Ann Charters sketches the unfolding of this most turbulent decade.
The Portable Sixties Reader is organized into thematic chapters, from the Civil Rights movement to the Anti-Vietnam movement, the Free Speech movement, the Counterculture movement, drugs and the movement into Inner Space, the Beats and other fringe literary movements, the Black Arts movement, the Womens movement, and the Environmental movement. The concluding chapter, Elegies for the Sixties, offers tributes to ten figures whose livesand deathscaptured the spirit of the decade.
Contributors include:
Edward Abbey, Sherman Alexie, James Baldwin, Richard Brautigan, Lenny Bruce, Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, Jim Carroll, Rachel Carson, Carlos Castenada, Bob Dylan, Betty Friedan, Nikki Giovanni, Michael Herr, Abbie Hoffman, Robert Hunter, Ken Kesey, Martin Luther King, Jr., Timothy Leary, Denise Levertov, Norman Mailer, Malcolm X, Country Joe McDonald, Kate Millet, Tim OBrien, Sylvia Plath, Susan Sontag, Gloria Steinem, Hunter S. Thompson, Calvin Trillin, Alice Walker, Eudora Welty and more.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina'
David Hajdu (pronounced HAY-doo), the prizewinning author of the magisterial jazz biography Lush Life, now steam-cleans the legend of the lost folk generation in Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña. What a ripping read! It's like an invitation to the wildest party Greenwich Village ever saw. You feel swept up in the coffeehouse culture that transformed ordinary suburban kids into ragged, radiant avatars of a traditional yet bewilderingly new music. Hajdu's sociomusical analysis is as scholarly as (though less arty than) Greil Marcus's work; he deftly sketches the sources and evolving styles of his ambitious, rather calculating subjects, proving in the process that genius is not individual--it's rooted in a time and place. Hajdu says Dylan heisted many early tunes (e.g., "Maggie's Farm" from Pete Seeger's "Down on Penny's Farm"): "Dylan [told] a radio interviewer that he felt as if his music had always existed and he just wrote it down ... [in fact], much of his early work had existed as other writers' melodies, chord structures, or thematic ideas." But Dylan and company made it all their own, and Hajdu vividly evokes the scenes they made.
Positively 4th Street is very much a group portrait. When something amazing happens, Hajdu puts you right there. The unknown Baez barefoot in the rain, bedazzling the Newport Jazz Festival and becoming immortal overnight. The irresistibly irresponsible Fariña talking his folk-star wife out of shooting him dead with his own pistol. The "little spastic gnome" Dylan transmogrified into greatness onstage, bashing Joan with the searing lyrics of "She Belongs to Me." A stoned Fariña advising Dylan to cynically hitch his wagon to Joan's rising star and "start a whole new genre. Poetry set to music, but not chamber music or beatnik jazz, man... poetry you can dance to."
The book is as delectably gossipy as Vanity Fair (one of Hajdu's employers). Richard married the exceedingly young beauty Mimi and helmed their career, but he might have dumped her for big sister Joan, whose madcap humor and verbal wit harmonized with his--except that he ineptly killed himself on a motorcycle first. Bob mumblingly courted both sisters, but when he cruelly taunted the insecure Joan, Mimi yanked his hair back until he cried. The account of Bob and Joan's musical-erotic passion is first-rate music history and uproarious soap opera. Hajdu's research is prodigious--even Fariña's close chum Thomas Pynchon granted interviews--and his anecdotes are often off-the-cuff funny: "[Rock manager Albert Grossman] was easy to deal with.... It wasn't till maybe two days after you would see Albert that you'd realize your underwear had been stolen." Full disclosure: Hajdu was one of my long-ago bosses at Entertainment Weekly, but that's certainly not why I heartily endorse this book. It's scholarship with a human face, akin to "poetry you can dance to." --Tim Appelo [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture'
One of the 1960s counterculture's most fascinating characters was Kerry Wendell Thornley -- a writer, philosopher, Zen dishwasher, enlightened prankster, and, possibly, an Oswald double with disturbing ties to the Kennedy assassination. A lifelong provocateur, Thornley was linked to many of the fringe elements of the time. He helped create the spoof religion called the Discordian Society and its tract, the Principia Discordia. He coined the term "paganism" to describe various nature religions. And he befriended Robert Anton Wilson, inspired the Illuminatus, and gave his anarchic support to the Bavarian Illuminati, a brilliant prank. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ready, Steady, Go! : The Smashing Rise and Giddy Fall of Swinging London'
Its the summer of 1966... The fundamental old ways: chastity, rationality, harmony, sobriety, even democracy: blasted to nothing or crumbling under siege. The city glows. It echoes. It pulses. It bleeds pastel and fuzzy, spicy, paisley and soft. This is how it's always going to be: smashing clothes, brilliant music, easy sex, eternal youth, the eyes of everybody, everyone's first thought, the top of the world, right here, right now: Swinging London.
Shawn Levy has a genius for unearthing the secret history of popular culture. The Los Angeles Times called King of Comedy, his biography of Jerry Lewis, "a model of what a celebrity bio ought to besmart, knowing, insightful, often funny, full of fascinating insiders' stories," and the Boston Globe declared that Rat Pack Confidential "evokes the time in question with the power of a novel, as well as James Ellroy's American Tabloid and better by far than Don DeLillo's Underworld."
In Ready, Steady, Go! Levy captures the spirit of the sixties in all its exuberance. A portrait of London from roughly 1961 to 1969, it chronicles the explosion of creativityin art, music and fashionand the revolutionssexual, social and politicalthat reshaped the world. Levy deftly blends the enthusiasm of a fan, the discerning eye of a social critic and a historian's objectivity as he re-creates the hectic pace and daring experimentation of the timesfrom the utter transformation of rock 'n' roll by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to the new aesthetics introduced by fashion designers like Mary Quant, haircutters like Vidal Sassoon, photographers like David Bailey, actors like Michael Caine and Terence Stamp and filmmakers like Richard Lester and Nicolas Roeg to the wild clothing shops and cutting-edge clubs that made Carnaby Street and King's Road the hippest thoroughfares in the world.
Spiced with the reminiscences of some of the leading icons of that period, their fans and followers, and featuring a photographic gallery of well-known faces and far-out fashions, Ready, Steady, Go! is an irresistible re-creation of a time and place that seemed almost impossibly fun. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali And The Spirit Of The Sixties'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1959-1969'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Right Stuff'
Tom Wolfe began The Right Stuff at a time when it was unfashionable to contemplate American heroism. Nixon had left the White House in disgrace, the nation was reeling from the catastrophe of Vietnam, and in 1979--the year the book appeared--Americans were being held hostage by Iranian militants. Yet it was exactly the anachronistic courage of his subjects that captivated Wolfe. In his foreword, he notes that as late as 1970, almost one in four career Navy pilots died in accidents. "The Right Stuff," he explains, "became a story of why men were willing--willing?--delighted!--to take on such odds in this, an era literary people had long since characterized as the age of the anti-hero."
Wolfe's roots in New Journalism were intertwined with the nonfiction novel that Truman Capote had pioneered with In Cold Blood. As Capote did, Wolfe tells his story from a limited omniscient perspective, dropping into the lives of his "characters" as each in turn becomes a major player in the space program. After an opening chapter on the terror of being a test pilot's wife, the story cuts back to the late 1940s, when Americans were first attempting to break the sound barrier. Test pilots, we discover, are people who live fast lives with dangerous machines, not all of them airborne.
Wolfe traces Alan Shepard's suborbital flight and Gus Grissom's embarrassing panic on the high seas (making the controversial claim that Grissom flooded his Liberty capsule by blowing the escape hatch too soon). The author also produces an admiring portrait of John Glenn's apple-pie heroism and selfless dedication. By the time Wolfe concludes with a return to Yeager and his late-career exploits, the narrative's epic proportions and literary merits are secure. Certainly The Right Stuff is the best, the funniest, and the most vivid book ever written about America's manned space program. --Patrick O'Kelley [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'San Francisco in the Sixties'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'SDS'

› Find signed collectible books: 'A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing, 1960-1980'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Seven Laws of Money'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Siddartha'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Siddhartha'
With parallels to the enlightenment of the Buddha, Hesse's Siddhartha is the story of a young Brahmin's quest for the ultimate reality. Steeped in the tenets of both psychoanalysis and Eastern mysticism, Siddhartha presents an original view of man and culture, and the arduous process of self-discovery that leads to reconciliation, harmony, and peace. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Siddhartha'
Hesse's famous and influential novel, Siddartha, is perhaps the most important and compelling moral allegory our troubled century has produced. Integrating Eastern and Western spiritual traditions with psychoanalysis and philosophy, this strangely simple tale, written with a deep and moving empathy for humanity, has touched the lives of millions since its original publication in 1922. Set in India, Siddhartha is the story of a young Brahmin's search for ultimate reality after meeting with the Buddha. His quest takes him from a life of decadence to asceticism, through the illusory joys of sensual love with a beautiful courtesan, and of wealth and fame, to the painful struggles with his son and the ultimate wisdom of renunciation. This new translation by award-winning translator Joachim Neugroschel includes an introduction by Hesse biographer Ralph Freedman. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Sixties: Portrait of an Era'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Slaughterhouse-Five or the Children's Crusade'
Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.
Don't let the ease of reading fool you--Vonnegut's isn't a conventional, or simple, novel. He writes, "There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick, and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters..." Slaughterhouse-Five (taken from the name of the building where the POWs were held) is not only Vonnegut's most powerful book, it is as important as any written since 1945. Like Catch- 22, it fashions the author's experiences in the Second World War into an eloquent and deeply funny plea against butchery in the service of authority. Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination, humanity, and gleeful appreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut's other works, but the book's basis in rock-hard, tragic fact gives it a unique poignancy--and humor. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sleeping Where I Fall: A Chronicle'
As the generation that launched America's counterculture in the 1960s matures into its gray ponytails and 401(k) plans, one might expect the autobiographies of its celebrities to be tinged with apology for goals unrealized. Indeed, with only a few notable exceptions, such as Peter Fonda's Don't Tell Dad, most celebrity autobiographies from '60s pop culture icons seem rooted in either bitterness or desperation. Fortunately, in Sleeping Where I Fall, Peter Coyote neither apologizes for his wild days nor waxes romantic for them. Nor should he.
This wise and witty, tightly crafted narrative reports on the turbulence of that era with philosophical integrity, wry humor, and unmitigated honesty. Looking back over his days with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, a street theater group that sought to break the conventional boundaries between performer and audience, Coyote rhapsodizes with equal vigor about the company's artistic triumphs and the pulchritude of its actresses. While his developing acting career and romantic misadventures comprise a great deal of the narrative, an even larger part dwells on his life as one of The Diggers, the band of anarchistic counterculturalists who fought against commercial culture's ability to co-opt the superficial elements of youthful rebellion by rejecting the very notions of ownership and extrinsic value. "The Diggers," writes Coyote, "understood that style is infinitely co-optable. What could not be co-opted was doing things for free-without money." And what things they did! Coyote recounts the lives and times of poets, actors, farmers, and philosophers who participated in a profound cultural experiment that tested the very limits of human consciousness and fell--eventually--to the excesses of personal indulgence.
Coyote's evolution from callow thespian to revolutionary communard to seasoned philosopher is fascinating, as much a social and political history as it is a reminiscence. The stories unravel like tender after-dinner tales in prose that captures the rasp and tickle of Coyote's corduroy voice. In the end, Sleeping Where I Fall reveals a man as complex and unpredictable as the totem animal from which he takes his name. --L.A. Smith [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Sniper in the Tower: The Charles Whitman Murders'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sonata For Jukebox: An Autobiography of My ears'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sonata for Jukebox: Pop Music, Memory, and the Imagined Life'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Soul on Ice'
The now-classic memoir that shocked, outraged, and ultimately changed the way America looked at the civil rights movement and the black experience.
By turns shocking and lyrical, unblinking and raw, the searingly honest memoirs of Eldridge Cleaver are a testament to his unique place in American history. Cleaver writes in Soul on Ice, "I'm perfectly aware that I'm in prison, that I'm a Negro, that I've been a rapist, and that I have a Higher Uneducation." What Cleaver shows us, on the pages of this now classic autobiography, is how much he was a man. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Spirit of the Sixties: The Making of Postwar Radicalism'
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Summer of Love will be the first definitive guide to the Art of the Psychedelic era. Richly illustrated, the book presents a unique range of images of works of art, alongside a wealth of contextual material and a number of informative, authoritative yet accessible essays. Covering a wide range of issues, they reflect the pervasive penetration of the art and culture of the 1960s by the aesthetics of psychedelia. At the same time, the catalogue will provide the historical context in which the art was created, an era marked by political protest, the counterculture, recreational drug use, student revolution and sexual liberation. The international list of contributors will include leading academics, cultural theorists, and critics from the worlds of art, film and rock music. The publication's design will mirror the colourful and experimental spirit of the times. Including works from the United States, the UK, Europe and beyond, the book is targeted at an international audience and will serve as a much needed critical re-evaluation of this era in art and cultural history. Accompanies a major exhibition at Tate Liverpool, Summer 2005. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Tale of Two Utopias: The Political Journey of the Generation of 1968'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Things They Carried'
Featuring explanation of key themes, motifs, and symbols including: Isolation the dead soldiers Shame Emotional burdens Truth in story telling Moral ambiguities And detailed analysis of these important characters: Tim O'Brien Jimmy Cross Mitchell Sanders Kiowa [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Under Albany'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'V'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Decades of the 20th Century : The 1960s'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El Lobo Estepario'
Student edition, Nobel prize winner 1947 [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pastoral Americana'
Seymour Levov, modelo a seguir por todos los muchachos judíos de New Jersey, gran atleta y mejor hijo, sólido heredero de la fábrica de guantes que su padre levantó desde la nada, ha rebasado la mitad del siglo XX sin conflictos que puedan estropear su dorada Arcadia, una vida placentera que comparte con su mujer Dawn, ex Miss New Jersey, y con su hija Meredith. Y es en este preciso momento,con su vida convertida en un eterno día de Acción de Gracias en el que todo el mundo come lo mismo, se comporta de la misma manera y carece de religión, cuando el Sueco Levov verá derrumabarse estrepitosamente todo lo que le rodea.
Pastoral americana es un relato lúcido que pone en tela de juicio los valores de la sociedad norteamericana y su capacidad de permanencia durante el conflicto final de los felices sesenta, con la intervención estadounidense en la guerra de Vietnam como telón de fondo.
"En la actual literatura norteamericana está Philip Roth y, después, todos los demás."
Chicago Tribune [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Der Steppenwolf'
Nur für Verrückte?
Als Der Steppenwolf vor siebzig Jahren erschien, wurde er von vielen angegriffen, von anderen begeistert aufgenommen. Vierzig Jahre später, in den bewegten sechziger Jahren, wurde er zum Kultbuch einer Generation. Und auch heute, auf der Schwelle zum neuen Jahrtausend, begeistert er junge Leser, die in Harry Haller den Seelenverwandten erkennen.
Harry Haller, der Steppenwolf, leidet an seiner Zerissenheit, empfindet halb als Mensch, halb als Wolf. Er sehnt sich nach Zugehörigkeit, nach Harmonie und Liebe, will aber auch unabhängig und frei sein und verabscheut alles Normale. Dieser Zwiespalt führt ihn immer tiefer in eine existenzielle Krise, in der er Selbstmord als einzigen Ausweg sieht. Doch Hermine, eine Prostituierte, und das Magische Theater helfen ihm, sich selbst zu erkennen und das Leben leichter zu nehmen.
Der Steppenwolf ist so vielschichtig, daß man immer wieder neue Aspekte entdecken kann. Als ich ihn vor zwanzig Jahren kennenlernte, stand für mich die Einsamkeit und die Ablehnung der verlogenen Bürgerlichkeit im Vordergrund. Das Lebensgefühl des Unverstandenen, der seine Ideale lebt, war mir vertraut. Dem seichten Alltag die extremen Gefühle vorzuziehen, schien auch mir erstrebenswert. Nicht lauwarm, sondern heiß und kalt. Damit spricht Hesse noch immer die Jugend an.
Heute lese und verstehe ich ihn anders. Der Mensch, der sich das Leben so schwer macht, tut mir leid, weil er nicht merkt, daß er ebenso borniert ist wie die, von denen er sich unterscheiden will. Er nimmt sich selbst zu ernst, rennt Idealen von Schönheit und Menschlichkeit hinterher und verachtet dabei die Menschen. Erst im Magischen Theater werden ihm die Augen geöffnet.
Der Steppenwolf ist in Hesses Leben und Werk ein Wendepunkt. Eine langjährige Krise kommt zum Höhepunkt und wird überwunden -- durch das Lachen über sich selbst. Für mich ist an diesem Roman faszinierend, daß er "mitwächst" und mir auch nach zwanzig Jahren noch etwas zu sagen hat. Der Steppenwolf ist siebzig Jahre alt und noch immer jung. --Roswitha Schmaltz [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'La Longue Route: Seul Entre Mers Et Ciels'
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