In these linked stories, the constants are the places—from Eight Mile High, the local high school, to Eight Miles High, the local bar; from The Clock, a restaurant that never closes, to Stan’s, a store that sells misfit clothes. Daniels’s characters wander Detroit, a world of concrete, where even a small strip of greenery becomes a hideout for mystery and mayhem. Even when they leave town—to Scout camp, or Washington, DC, or the mythical Up North, they take with them their hardscrabble working-class sensibilities and their determination to do what they must do to get by. With a survival instinct that includes a healthy dose of humor, Daniels’s characters navigate work and love, change and loss, the best they can. These characters don’t have the luxury of feeling sorry for themselves, even when they stumble. They dust themselves off and head back into the ring with another rope-a-dope wisecrack. These stories seem to suggest that we are always coming of age, becoming, trying to figure out what it means to be an adult in this world, attempting to figure out a way to forgive ourselves for not measuring up to our own expectations of what it means to lead a successful, happy life.
Eight Miles High documents the evolution of the folk-rock movement from mid-1966 through the end of the decade. This much-anticipated sequel to Turn! Turn! Turn!(00330946) - the acclaimed history of folk-rock's early years - portrays the mutation of the genre into psychedelia via California bands like the Byrds and Jefferson Airplane; the maturation of folk-rock composers in the singer-songwriter movement; the re-emergence of Bob Dylan and the creation of country-rock; the rise of folk-rock's first supergroup, CSN&Y; the origination of British folk-rock; and the growing importance of major festivals from Newport to Woodstock. Based on firsthand interviews with such folk-rock visionaries as: Jorma Kaukonen, Roger McGuinn, Donovan, Judy Collins, Jim Messina, Dan Hicks and dozens of others.
"Gracyk grapples with the ways that rock shapes--limits and expands--our notions of who we can be in the world. [He] sees rock as a mass art, open-ended and open to diverse (but not unlimited) interpretations. Recordings reach millions, drawing people together in communities of listeners who respond viscerally to its sound and intellectually to its messages. As an art form that proclaims its emotional authenticity and resistance to convention, rock music constitutes part of the cultural apparatus from which individuals mold personal and political identities. Going to the heart of this relationship between the music's role in its performers' and fans' self-construction, Gracyk probes questions of gender and appropriation. How can a feminist be a Stones fan or a straight man enjoy the Indigo Girls? Does borrowing music that carries a "racial identity" always add up to exploitation, a charge leveled at Paul Simon's Graceland? Rang[es] through forty years of rock history and offer[s] a trove of anecdotes"--Publisher description.
First published by Mountain Press in 1970 and in print nearly continuously through several editions by different publishers, Mile High Mile Deep is once again available through Mountain Press. Part memoir, part novel, Richard Kilroy O�Malley�s compelling coming-of-age story captures life in Butte in the 1920s, when the city was a lusty, two-fisted copper camp. Written with sensitivity and feeling, this wonderful book brings to life the Irish, Scandinavians, Slavs, Cornishmen, Syrians, Greeks, Finns, and Italians who scratched a living in the boisterous mining city. First as observers and then as participants, Dick and his friend Frank see and feel the stark power of the mines�a mile high in the blue sky of Montana, but a mile deep, too, in the sweat and gloom of the underground shafts that trapped and destroyed.
A look at the 1993 season of major-league baseball's newest team, the Colorado Rockies, and describes the events and personalities that shaped the team's first record-breaking season
In her latest collection of essays and lectures, Homage to Americans, Eva Brann explores the roots and essence of our American ways. In “Mile-high Meditations,” her flight’s late departure from the Denver airport prompts a consideration of her manner of waiting (i.e.,“being”). As she looks around, she notes (and compares to her own) the ways her fellow travelers pass their time. These observations lead her to wonder how each of us lives with ourselves and how we live together—and put up with one another. With these questions in mind, the next two essays carefully examine two famous political documents that have shaped American self-understanding: James Madison’s “Memorial and Remonstrance,” which is the essential argument for separation of church and state; and Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which enlarged and refashioned our understanding of the American political character, first given formal expression in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. In “Paradox of Obedience,” a lecture delivered at the Air Force Academy, Brann considers the puzzling character of obedience in a country dedicated to liberty. The concluding piece, “The Empire of the Sun and the West,” takes us to Aztec Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest. What allowed Cortes and his handful of men to overcome a great empire? In pursuit of an answer, Brann describes a human type whose fulfillment she sees in the American character.
Think "Woodstock" and the mind turns to the seminal 1969 festival that crowned a seismic decade of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. But the town of Woodstock, New York, the original planned venue of the concert, is located over 60 miles from the site to which the fabled half a million flocked. Long before the landmark music festival usurped the name, Woodstock-the tiny Catskills town where Bob Dylan holed up after his infamous 1966 motorcycle accident-was already a key location in the '60s rock landscape. In Small Town Talk, Barney Hoskyns re-creates Woodstock's community of brilliant dysfunctional musicians, scheming dealers, and opportunistic hippie capitalists drawn to the area by Dylan and his sidekicks from the Band. Central to the book's narrative is the broodingly powerful presence of Albert Grossman, manager of Dylan, the Band, Janis Joplin, Paul Butterfield, and Todd Rundgren-and the Big Daddy of a personal fiefdom in Bearsville that encompassed studios, restaurants, and his own record label. Intertwined in the story are the Woodstock experiences and associations of artists as diverse as Van Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Tim Hardin, Karen Dalton, and Bobby Charles (whose immortal song-portrait of Woodstock gives the book its title). Drawing on numerous first-hand interviews with the remaining key players in the scene-and on the period when he lived there himself in the 1990s-Hoskyns has produced an East Coast companion to his bestselling L.A. canyon classic Hotel California. This is a richly absorbing study of a vital music scene in a revolutionary time and place.
The bestselling author of Pledged returns with a groundbreaking look at the pressure to achieve faced by America's teens In Pledged, Alexandra Robbins followed four college girls to produce a riveting narrative that read like fiction. Now, in The Overachievers, Robbins uses the same captivating style to explore how our high-stakes educational culture has spiraled out of control. During the year of her ten-year reunion, Robbins goes back to her high school, where she follows heart-tuggingly likeable students including "AP" Frank, who grapples with horrifying parental pressure to succeed; Audrey, whose panicked perfectionism overshadows her life; Sam, who worries his years of overachieving will be wasted if he doesn't attend a name-brand college; Taylor, whose ambition threatens her popular girl status; and The Stealth Overachiever, a mystery junior who flies under the radar. Robbins tackles teen issues such as intense stress, the student and teacher cheating epidemic, sports rage, parental guilt, the black market for study drugs, and a college admissions process so cutthroat that students are driven to suicide and depression because of a B. With a compelling mix of fast-paced narrative and fascinating investigative journalism, The Overachievers aims both to calm the admissions frenzy and to expose its escalating dangers.
The stories in Detroit Tales are tales about urban, working- class America. People struggle both to remain in the city and to escape the city. The three central motifs of this collection are the city, the workplace, and the automobile. If these stories have one unifying theme, it is that escape is not the answer. When the pulls of friendship and love and personal responsibility draw us back to our ordinary homes and our ordinary jobs, we must trust those pulls, and we must lead those lives with as much dignity as we can muster.
Seventh-generation Detroiters Andy Linn, Emily Linn, and Rob Linn, and local business City Bird produced Belle Isle to 8 Mile: An Insider's Guide to Detroit, Second Edition, the second edition of the most popular printed guide to the city in a generation. Six years since the original book, and fully revised and expanded for 2019, this new edition includes 45 new illustrations and more than 500 new entries and featured locales. In total, the book highlights more than 1,500 Detroit attractions, sites, institutions, events, restaurants, bars, shops, and curiosities, from the essential to the obscure, making this edition of Belle Isle to 8 Mile the most comprehensive Detroit guide book ever published, in the known record. The result of thousands of hours of research, thousands of site visits, and contributions and ideas from hundreds of local residents, this community-driven, streetwise guide is a key for readers to unlock the city. Led by the Linns, the Belle Isle to 8 Mile team administered surveys, conducted in-depth research, and explored the widest-reaches of the city's neighborhoods to document the full scope of the city's 139 square miles. Like its predecessor, the book builds off of this in-depth research to chronicle both long-standing institutions and off-the-beaten-path neighborhood treasures and hidden gems that make the city so special, documenting each featured locale in historical context, with informative descriptions that capture what make them special, as well as ample touches of humor along the way. However, the expanded second edition of the book also captures the ways in which Detroit has grown and evolved since the publication of the first volume, acting as a printed account and living document of a changing city, as well as a testament to the small, independent businesses that have continued to thrive in the neighborhoods and driven the city's evolution. In addition to entries that detail more than1,500 locations and destinations organized geographically to encourage exploration, the book features maps and original, intricate pen and ink illustrations to help orient readers as well as an alphabetical index to aid discovery and utility. The book also employs a star system throughout the volume to denote destinations that are exceptional, particularly unique, or essential for first time visitors. In addition, in chapter 13, the editors highlighted recommended top destinations for particular tastes to help plan a visit, including rounding up top architectural destinations, vegetarian options, cheap eats, soul food, family activities, and many other areas, for residents and tourists alike. From high art to folk art, national attractions to basement museums, haute cuisine to food trucks, cocktail bars to dive bars, farmer's markets to urban farms, and rock 'n' roll to blues and soul--and whether in Detroit for the first time or for a lifetime, or learning about it from afar--readers will delight in uncovering and discovering this great American city. This guide is essential reading, not just for visitors, but for long-time residents, as well as for anyone who loves Detroit.
