The acclaimed biography—now updated and revised. “Many writers have tried to probe [Dylan’s] life, but never has it been done so well, so captivatingly” (The Boston Globe). Howard Sounes’s Down the Highway broke news about Dylan’s fiercely guarded personal life and set the standard as the most comprehensive and riveting biography on Bob Dylan. Now this edition continues to document the iconic songwriter’s life through new interviews and reporting, covering the release of Dylan’s first #1 album since the seventies, recognition from the Pulitzer Prize jury for his influence on popular culture, and the publication of his bestselling memoir, giving full appreciation to his artistic achievements and profound significance. Candid and refreshing, Down the Highway is a sincere tribute to Dylan’s seminal place in postwar American cultural history, and remains an essential book for the millions of people who have enjoyed Dylan’s music over the years. “Irresistible . . . Finally puts Dylan the human being in the rocket’s red glare.” —Detroit Free Press
The northern Great Plains have given this poet a first canvas for his imaginative art as found in his first published poetry collection. In recent years he has began to struggle with the difficult topics of his home region, primarily the difficulty of life out on the northern Great Plains in what he has termed the "patches." In these poems are references to the sugar beet patch, the dry land farming patch, the irrigated farm land patch, the ranching patch, the strip mining patch, and the oil patch. The agrarian culture of his home region is a place of core values and spiritual strengths which encourage him to live simply inspite of the new "badlands" left in the wake of the cultural genocide and environmental degradation of the empire builders of the European ascendancy over North America. Here are poems spoken by personae which can be said to each be the masks of the poet Rick Hilber who in creating his poems would have us, poet and reader or listener, step into the shoes of another. This is a poet that trusts that his individual experience is also a disclosure of the demands on each of us in accepting life on whatever terms it is offered us. ...
On Highway 61 explores the historical context of the significant social dissent that was central to the cultural genesis of the sixties. The book is going to search for the deeper roots of American cultural and musical evolution for the past 150 years by studying what the Western European culture learned from African American culture in a historical progression that reaches from the minstrel era to Bob Dylan. The book begins with America's first great social critic, Henry David Thoreau, and his fundamental source of social philosophy:–––his profound commitment to freedom, to abolitionism and to African–American culture. Continuing with Mark Twain, through whom we can observe the rise of minstrelsy, which he embraced, and his subversive satirical masterpiece Huckleberry Finn. While familiar, the book places them into a newly articulated historical reference that shines new light and reveals a progression that is much greater than the sum of its individual parts. As the first post–Civil War generation of black Americans came of age, they introduced into the national culture a trio of musical forms—ragtime, blues, and jazz— that would, with their derivations, dominate popular music to this day. Ragtime introduced syncopation and become the cutting edge of the modern 20th century with popular dances. The blues would combine with syncopation and improvisation and create jazz. Maturing at the hands of Louis Armstrong, it would soon attract a cluster of young white musicians who came to be known as the Austin High Gang, who fell in love with black music and were inspired to play it themselves. In the process, they developed a liberating respect for the diversity of their city and country, which they did not see as exotic, but rather as art. It was not long before these young white rebels were the masters of American pop music – big band Swing. As Bop succeeded Swing, and Rhythm and Blues followed, each had white followers like the Beat writers and the first young rock and rollers. Even popular white genres like the country music of Jimmy Rodgers and the Carter Family reflected significant black influence. In fact, the theoretical separation of American music by race is not accurate. This biracial fusion achieved an apotheosis in the early work of Bob Dylan, born and raised at the northern end of the same Mississippi River and Highway 61 that had been the birthplace of much of the black music he would study. As the book reveals, the connection that began with Thoreau and continued for over 100 years was a cultural evolution where, at first individuals, and then larger portions of society, absorbed the culture of those at the absolute bottom of the power structure, the slaves and their descendants, and realized that they themselves were not free.
This important book from a Pulitzer Prize finalist follows the brutal journey a group of men take to cross the Mexican border: "the single most compelling, lucid, and lyrical contemporary account of the absurdity of U.S. border policy" (The Atlantic). In May 2001, a group of men attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona, through the deadliest region of the continent, the "Devil's Highway." Three years later, Luis Alberto Urrea wrote about what happened to them. The result was a national bestseller, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a "book of the year" in multiple newspapers, and a work proclaimed as a modern American classic.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER More than ONE MILLION copies sold A TODAY Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick A New York Times Notable Book, and Chosen by Oprah Daily, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Bill Gates and Barack Obama as a Best Book of the Year “Wise and wildly entertaining . . . permeated with light, wit, youth.” —The New York Times Book Review “A classic that we will read for years to come.” —Jenna Bush Hager, Read with Jenna book club “Fantastic. Set in 1954, Towles uses the story of two brothers to show that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as we might hope.” —Bill Gates “A real joyride . . . elegantly constructed and compulsively readable.” —NPR The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York. Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles's third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes. “Once again, I was wowed by Towles’s writing—especially because The Lincoln Highway is so different from A Gentleman in Moscow in terms of setting, plot, and themes. Towles is not a one-trick pony. Like all the best storytellers, he has range. He takes inspiration from famous hero’s journeys, including The Iliad, The Odyssey, Hamlet, Huckleberry Finn, and Of Mice and Men. He seems to be saying that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as an interstate highway. But, he suggests, when something (or someone) tries to steer us off course, it is possible to take the wheel.” – Bill Gates
A boy on the Alcan is an intriguing story of seven year old Eddie Byskal. He was born in a small Missions Hospital on the shore of Wakaw Lake, Saskatchewan, Canada. When Eddie’s mother passed away his father signed up as a carpenter on the construction of the Alaska Highway. Eddie, his sister Annie and stepmother, travelled by train to the village of Dawson Creek, British Columbia. It was the termination of the railroad and Mile O of what was to become a highway 1400 miles long, carved through a vast, unmapped wilderness. Eddie's parents were employed at camps along the highway. From 1943 to 1950 Eddie was moved multiple times to be cared for by others and often far from his parents. Attending school just happened when convenient. As you turn the pages of the book follow the footsteps of a young boy who faced the unknown every day asking, “Where is my home? Where do I sleep tonight? To whom do I belong? Am I just a waif?" At fourteen years of age and alone, Eddie considered his future and started on a path that could settle and establish him as a man with a purpose!
The inspiration for the new ABC series Big Sky. Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel, the New York Times bestselling author of Back of Beyond and Breaking Point and the creator of the Joe Pickett series is back. "If CJ Box isn't already on your list, put him there." – USA Today When two sisters set out across a remote stretch of Montana road to visit their friend, little do they know it will be the last time anyone might ever hear from them again. The girls—and their car—simply vanish. Former police investigator Cody Hoyt has just lost his job and has fallen off the wagon after a long stretch of sobriety. Convinced by his son and his former rookie partner, Cassie Dewell, he begins the drive south to the girls' last known location. As Cody makes his way to the lonely stretch of Montana highway where they went missing, Cassie discovers that Gracie and Danielle Sullivan aren't the first girls who have disappeared in this area. This majestic landscape is the hunting ground for a killer whose viciousness is outmatched only by his intelligence. And he might not be working alone. Time is running out for Gracie and Danielle...Can Cassie overcome her doubts and lack of experience and use her innate skill? Can Cody Hoyt battle his own demons and find this killer before another victim vanishes on the highway?
Dead Wrong On January 23, 2000, already battered by an ice storm, the rural Alabama resort town of Mentone was about to be struck by an even more terrifying freak catastrophe. Hurtling down the highway in a Lincoln Town Car was Hayward Bissell, a 400-pound madman on a murder rampage. Ramming the pickup truck of Don and Rhea Pirch, Bissell lured Don Pirch on to the road, running him down with his car. Dead Reckoning Bissell next targeted the home of James and Sue Pumphrey. After stabbing James Pumphrey in the stomach, Bissell was thwarted by two family dogs, who gave their lives to protect their owners. Their sacrifice bought Pumphrey enough time to get a gun and scare off Bissell--who didn't know the weapon was actually inoperable. Dead End When Bissell was finally stopped, police discovered that he wasn't alone. Occupying the passenger seat beside him was the mutilated, partially dismembered body of his pregnant girlfriend, Patricia Ann Booher. In February 2002, Bissell pled "guilty but insane" and was sent to prison for life. Was he really crazy? Or was he crazy like a fox, turning it on and off to try to beat a death sentence for Booher's murder. . . Includes 16 Pages Of Shocking Photos
A father and son take a road trip along Highway 61--the legendary road of the blues--and through some of the most musically fertile and diverse landscapes in America. 10 photos.
