American Entertainment History

American schools are not designed to educate Black children. Black children often succeed despite their schools instead of because of them. School can be a fantastic experience that propels Black students ahead in life, but only if both teachers and parents know what Black children's unique needs are and how to meet them. You will love this audiobook because an award-winning educator with more than two decades in the classroom uses his personal experiences to provide easy-to-understand methods to save Black children from America's education system that too often ignores their needs.

Memphis Boys chronicles the story of the rhythm section at Chips Moman's American Studios from 1964, when the group began working together, until 1972, when Moman shut down the studio and moved the entire operation to Atlanta. Utilizing extensive interviews with Moman and the group, as well as additional comments from the songwriters, sound engineers, and office staff, author Roben Jones creates a collective biography combined with a business history and a critical analysis of important recordings.

February, 1940. After a decade of worldwide depression, World War II had begun in Europe and Asia. With Germany on the march and Japan at war with China, the global crisis was in a crescendo. America's top songwriter, Irving Berlin, had captured the nation's mood a little more than a year before with his patriotic hymn "God Bless America."

Fifty years ago, a little boy was cast in a movie with some of Hollywood's brightest stars. The movie: It's a Wonderful Life; the boy: Jimmy Hawkins; today, he tells his story. Through personal recollection, careful research, and interviews with cast and crew, actor Jimmy Hawkins, who played four-year-old Tommy Bailey, takes you behind the scenes for a first-hand look at the American movie classic It's a Wonderful Life.

Only one performance style has dominated the lexicon of the casual moviegoer: "Method acting." The first reception-based analysis of film acting, Imagining the Method investigates how popular understandings of the so-called Method—what its author Justin Rawlins calls "methodness"—created an exclusive brand for white, male actors while associating such actors with rebellion and marginalization. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book maps the forces giving shape to methodness and policing its boundaries.

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.

An examination of African American imagery and participation in American movies includes a timeline of important African American events in film history and discusses the achievements of noted celebrities.

For over a century, cinephiles and film scholars have had to grapple with an ugly artifact that sits at the beginnings of film history. D. W. Griffith's profoundly racist epic, The Birth of a Nation, inspired controversy and protest at its 1915 release and was defended as both a true history of Reconstruction (although it was based on fiction) and a new achievement in cinematic art. Paul McEwan examines the long and shifting history of its reception, revealing how the film became not just a cinematic landmark but also an influential force in American aesthetics and intellectual life.

DESPRE AUDIOBOOK. Iată cum o cultură marginală, considerată încă "tânără“ după aproape 50 de ani de afirmare, inspiră o carte atât de bogată în informații. Ce-i drept, autorii au îndrăznit, iar îndrăzneala le-a fost răsplătită: fie că vorbim despre concertul lui Slick Rick din Roxbury, fie despre vizita la studioul RJam, aceștia au documentat fenomenul din interior, dezbrăcat de orice aparență sau prejudecată. Porniți într-o misiune eminamente imposibilă, autorii reușesc totuși să se apropie de esența rapului.

Melanin in Movies examines how Hollywood shapes the perception of Black Americans. This book challenges the idea that Hollywood is just about entertainment, exploring how the film industry actively influences society's view of Black people. By analyzing key examples and trends in Black representation, Melanin in Movies reveals how film can be both a tool for liberation and a means of oppression.

At the peak of the civil rights movement, Lydia Abarca was the first ballerina in a Black ballet company to grace the cover of Dance magazine. Alongside founding members Shelia Rohan and Gayle McKinney-Griffith and first-generation dancers Karlya Shelton and Marcia Sells, Abarca invited a bright light to shine on Black professional classical dancers. Grit, determination, and exquisite artistry propelled these swans of Harlem to dizzying heights as they performed around the world for audiences that included celebrities, dignitaries, and royalty.

This Is Our Music, declared saxophonist Ornette Coleman's 1960 album title. But whose music was it? At various times during the 1950s and 1960s, musicians, critics, fans, politicians, and entrepreneurs claimed jazz as a national art form, an Afrocentric race music, an extension of modernist innovation in other genres, a music of mass consciousness, and the preserve of a cultural elite. This original and provocative book explores who makes decisions about the value of a cultural form and on what basis.

The Blues Brothers hit theatres on June 20, 1980. Their scripted mission was to save a local Chicago orphanage; but Aykroyd, who conceived and wrote much of the film, had a greater mission: to honour the then-seemingly forgotten tradition of rhythm and blues, some of whose greatest artists.

Reagan's name is still relevant in American politics today, with every politician with an R next to his or her name trying to claim Ronald Reagan's conservative mantle. In the Republican presidential nomination debates in 2011, Reagan's name was invoked an average of over five times per debate, more than every other president combined. Meanwhile, Americans of all stripes continue to debate the merits of "Reaganomics" more than 30 years after Reagan was elected.

Since 2001, the US Department of State has been sending hip hop artists abroad to perform and teach as goodwill ambassadors. There are good reasons for this: Hip hop is known and loved across the globe, acknowledged and appreciated as a product of American culture. Hip hop has from its beginning been a means of creating community through artistic collaboration, fostering what hip hop artists call building.

Benjamin Franklin is renowned for his landmark inventions, including bifocals, the Franklin stove, and the lightning rod. Yet his own favorite invention is unknown to the general public. The glass armonica, the first musical instrument invented by an American, was constructed of stacked glass bowls and played by rubbing one's fingers on the rims. It was so popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries that Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, and Strauss composed for it. In Angelic Music, Corey Mead describes how Franklin's instrument fell out of popular favor.

During the Cold War, over 500 songs were written about nuclear weapons, fear of the Soviet Union, civil defense, bomb shelters, uranium mining, the space race, espionage, the Berlin Wall, and glasnost. This music uncovers aspects of the world-changing events that documentaries and history books cannot. In Atomic Tunes, Tim and Joanna Smolko explore everything from the serious to the comical, the morbid to the crude, showing the widespread concern among musicians who were trying to cope with the effect of communism on American society.

The Provincetown Players created a revolution in American theatre, making room for truly modern approaches to playwriting, stage production, and performance. In Staging America, Jeffery Kennedy gives the unabridged story in a meticulously researched and comprehensive narrative that sheds new light on the history of the Provincetown Players. At the center of the study is an extensive account of the career of George Cram Cook, the Players' leader and artistic conscience, as well as one of the most significant facilitators of modernist writing in early twentieth-century American literature.

Dive into the intricate world of American politics with American Political Parties: A Comprehensive Guide to History, Agendas, and Influence. This audiobook offers an in-depth exploration of the diverse political landscape in the United States, providing listeners with a detailed understanding of the major and minor political parties that have shaped the nation’s history.

As studio bosses, directors, and actors, Jews have been heavily involved in film history and vitally involved in all aspects of film production. Yet Jewish characters have been represented onscreen in stereotypical and disturbing ways, while Jews have also helped to produce some of the most troubling stereotypes of people of color in Hollywood film history. In Hollywood's Chosen People, leading scholars consider the complex relationship between Jews and the film industry.