American Pop

Download or read book American Pop written by Snowden Wright and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “Mr. Wright’s imagined history of the rise and fall of the sugary drink empire is so robust and recognizable that you might feel nostalgic for the taste of a soda you’ve never had.” – Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK BY Parade • Cosmopolitan • Town & Country • AARP • InStyle • Garden & Gun • Vol. 1 Brooklyn The story of a family. The story of an empire. The story of a nation. Moving from Mississippi to Paris to New York and back again, a saga of family, ambition, passion, and tragedy that brings to life one unforgettable Southern dynasty—the Forsters, founders of the world’s first major soft-drink company—against the backdrop of more than a century of American cultural history. The child of immigrants, Houghton Forster has always wanted more—from his time as a young boy in Mississippi, working twelve-hour days at his father’s drugstore; to the moment he first laid eyes on his future wife, Annabelle Teague, a true Southern belle of aristocratic lineage; to his invention of the delicious fizzy drink that would transform him from tiller boy into the founder of an empire, the Panola Cola Company, and entice a youthful, enterprising nation entering a hopeful new age. Now the heads of a preeminent American family spoken about in the same breath as the Hearsts and the Rockefellers, Houghton and Annabelle raise their four children with the expectation they’ll one day become world leaders. The burden of greatness falls early on eldest son Montgomery, a handsome and successful politician who has never recovered from the horrors and heartbreak of the Great War. His younger siblings Ramsey and Lance, known as the “infernal twins,” are rivals not only in wit and beauty, but in their utter carelessness with the lives and hearts of others. Their brother Harold, as gentle and caring as the twins can be cruel, is slowed by a mental disability—and later generations seem equally plagued by misfortune, forcing Houghton to seriously consider who should control the company after he’s gone. An irresistible tour de force of original storytelling, American Pop blends fact and fiction, the mundane and the mythical, and utilizes techniques of historical reportage to capture how, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s words, “families are always rising and falling in America,” and to explore the many ways in which nostalgia can manipulate cultural memory—and the stories we choose to tell about ourselves.

Download or read book American Pop written by Arie Kaplan and published by Twenty-First Century Books ™. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 67 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throbbing disco beats boom at the club. Crowds move to the lively beat of dance pop hits. Fans scream and cheer for teen idols. These are the sounds of pop. After Elvis hit the scene in the 1950s, a distinct youth taste in popular music began to emerge. The sound of pop music has varied greatly in the decades since Elvis, ranging from rock to disco to boy bands to dance pop. But all pop music is defined by catchy melodies and a broad appeal to teens. Find out how it all began. Learn about MTV's role in shaping pop music. Discover the stories of bubblegum pop groups, family bands, dance-pop idols, and disco sensations. And read more about legends such as Paul Anka, Madonna, the Jackson Five, and Katy Perry.

Download or read book American Pop [4 volumes] written by Bob Batchelor and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2008-12-30 with total page 1703 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pop culture is the heart and soul of America, a unifying bridge across time bringing together generations of diverse backgrounds. Whether looking at the bright lights of the Jazz Age in the 1920s, the sexual and the rock-n-roll revolution of the 1960s, or the thriving social networking websites of today, each period in America's cultural history develops its own unique take on the qualities define our lives.American Pop: Popular Culture Decade by Decade is the most comprehensive reference on American popular culture by decade ever assembled, beginning with the 1900s up through today. The four-volume set examines the fascinating trends across decades and eras by shedding light on the experiences of Americans young and old, rich and poor, along with the influences of arts, entertainment, sports, and other cultural forces. Whether a pop culture aficionado or a student new to the topic, American Pop provides readers with an engaging look at American culture broken down into discrete segments, as well as analysis that gives insight into societal movements, trends, fads, and events that propelled the era and the nation. In-depth chapters trace the evolution of pop culture in 11 key categories: Key Events in American Life, Advertising, Architecture, Books, Newspapers, Magazines, and Comics, Entertainment, Fashion, Food, Music, Sports and Leisure Activities, Travel, and Visual Arts. Coverage includes: How Others See Us, Controversies and scandals, Social and cultural movements, Trends and fads, Key icons, and Classroom resources. Designed to meet the high demand for resources that help students study American history and culture by the decade, this one-stop reference provides readers with a broad and interdisciplinary overview of the numerous aspects of popular culture in our country. Thoughtful examination of our rich and often tumultuous popular history, illustrated with hundreds of historical and contemporary photos, makes this the ideal source to turn to for ready reference or research.

Download or read book Super Black written by Adilifu Nama and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Super Black places the appearance of black superheroes alongside broad and sweeping cultural trends in American politics and pop culture, which reveals how black superheroes are not disposable pop products, but rather a fascinating racial phenomenon through which futuristic expressions and fantastic visions of black racial identity and symbolic political meaning are presented. Adilifu Nama sees the value—and finds new avenues for exploring racial identity—in black superheroes who are often dismissed as sidekicks, imitators of established white heroes, or are accused of having no role outside of blaxploitation film contexts. Nama examines seminal black comic book superheroes such as Black Panther, Black Lightning, Storm, Luke Cage, Blade, the Falcon, Nubia, and others, some of whom also appear on the small and large screens, as well as how the imaginary black superhero has come to life in the image of President Barack Obama. Super Black explores how black superheroes are a powerful source of racial meaning, narrative, and imagination in American society that express a myriad of racial assumptions, political perspectives, and fantastic (re)imaginings of black identity. The book also demonstrates how these figures overtly represent or implicitly signify social discourse and accepted wisdom concerning notions of racial reciprocity, equality, forgiveness, and ultimately, racial justice.

Download or read book American Pop Art written by Lawrence Alloway and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Catalog of the exhibition:" p. viii-xii. Bibliography: p. 133-140. Based on an exhibition organized for and shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, April 16. 1974, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Download or read book Indigenous Pop written by Jeff Berglund and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2016-03-10 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book is an interdisciplinary discussion of popular music performed and created by American Indian musicians, providing an important window into history, politics, and tribal communities as it simultaneously complements literary, historiographic, anthropological, and sociological discussions of Native culture"--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book Love for Sale written by David Hajdu and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2016-10-18 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A personal, idiosyncratic history of popular music that also may well be definitive, from the revered music critic From the age of song sheets in the late nineteenth-century to the contemporary era of digital streaming, pop music has been our most influential laboratory for social and aesthetic experimentation, changing the world three minutes at a time. In Love for Sale, David Hajdu—one of the most respected critics and music historians of our time—draws on a lifetime of listening, playing, and writing about music to show how pop has done much more than peddle fantasies of love and sex to teenagers. From vaudeville singer Eva Tanguay, the “I Don’t Care Girl” who upended Victorian conceptions of feminine propriety to become one of the biggest stars of her day to the scandal of Blondie playing disco at CBGB, Hajdu presents an incisive and idiosyncratic history of a form that has repeatedly upset social and cultural expectations. Exhaustively researched and rich with fresh insights, Love for Sale is unbound by the usual tropes of pop music history. Hajdu, for instance, gives a star turn to Bessie Smith and the “blues queens” of the 1920s, who brought wildly transgressive sexuality to American audience decades before rock and roll. And there is Jimmie Rodgers, a former blackface minstrel performer, who created country music from the songs of rural white and blacks . . . entwined with the sound of the Swiss yodel. And then there are today’s practitioners of Electronic Dance Music, who Hajdu celebrates for carrying the pop revolution to heretofore unimaginable frontiers. At every turn, Hajdu surprises and challenges readers to think about our most familiar art in unexpected ways. Masterly and impassioned, authoritative and at times deeply personal, Love for Sale is a book of critical history informed by its writer's own unique history as a besotted fan and lifelong student of pop.