A Few Words in Defense of Our Country
A Few Words in Defense of Our Country

Author: Robert Hilburn

Publisher: Hachette Books

Published: 2024-10-22

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 0306834715

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“Randy Newman is our great master of American song and storytelling."--Bruce Springsteen “At last, the biography that Randy Newman has long deserved. The emotional precision, the humor and sweep, the truths and secrets behind his remarkable body of work . . . it’s all here in Robert Hilburn’s heartfelt and indispensable account of America’s finest songwriter. Leave it to Hilburn to pull back the curtain on the incredible life of Newman, a shy genius who clearly trusted him enough to point him in all the right directions. It’s more than a great read, it’s an invitation to re-visit Randy Newman’s work with renewed appreciation for the man who uniquely defined the American Experience just when we needed it most.”--Cameron Crowe The definitive biography of songwriter Randy Newman, told with his full cooperation, by acclaimed biographer and longtime Los Angeles Times music critic, Robert Hilburn Randy Newman is widely hailed as one of America’s all-time greatest songwriters, equally skilled in the sophisticated melodies and lyrics of the Gershwin-Porter era and the cultural commentary of his own generation, with Bob Dylan and Paul Simon among his most ardent admirers. While tens of millions around the world can hum “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” his disarming centerpiece for Toy Story, most of them would be astonished to learn that the heart of Newman’s legacy is in the dozens of brilliant songs that detail the injustices, from racism to class inequality, that have contributed to the division of our nation. Rolling Stone declared that a single Newman song, “Sail Away,” tells us more about America than “The Star-Spangled Banner.” And yet, his legacy remains largely undocumented in book form—until now. In A FEW WORDS IN DEFENSE OF OUR COUNTRY, veteran music journalist Robert Hilburn presents the definitive portrait of an American legend. Hilburn has known Newman since his club debut at the Troubadour in 1970, and the two have maintained a connection in the decades since, conversing over the course of times good and bad. Though Newman has long refused to talk with potential biographers, he now gives Hilburn unprecedented access not only to himself but also to his archives, as well as his family, friends, and collaborators. Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, John Williams, Linda Ronstadt, Don Henley, Bonnie Raitt, Chuck D, James Taylor, and New York Times’ Pulitzer-winning columnists, Thomas Friedman and Wesley Morris, among others, contributed to the book. In addition to exploring Newman’s prolific career and the evolution of his songwriting, A FEW WORDS IN DEFENSE OF OUR COUNTRY also dives into his childhood and early influences, his musical family that ruled Hollywood movie scores for decades, the relationships that have provided inspiration for his songs, and so much more. As thought-provoking and thorough as it is tender, this book is an overdue tribute to the legendary songwriter whose music has long reflected and challenged the America we know today.

Words of Our Country
Words of Our Country

Author: Robert M. W. Dixon

Publisher: University of Queensland Press(Australia)

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13:

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A Country of Words
A Country of Words

Author: Abdel Bari Atwan

Publisher: Saqi

Published: 2012-07-15

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 0863568386

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Few lives reflect their times as much as the life of Abdel Bari Atwan. Born in a refugee camp in Gaza in 1950, he left age seventeen and has since become one of the world's most foremost commentators on the Middle East. In this revealing memoir, Atwan recounts with humour and honesty his extraordinary journey. He depicts both the horror of camp massacres and the unexpected consequences of Britain's involvement in the region - such as when a British paratrooper fell from the sky with his sizeable parachute and everyone in his mother's village got new silk trousers. Atwan shares his many extraordinary encounters, including tea with Margaret Thatcher, a weekend with Osama bin Laden, intimate meetings with Yasser Arafat, and the row between Colonel Gaddafi and the Shah of Iran that earned him his first journalistic break. But his is also a touching, personal story, never more so than when he describes taking his British-born children to meet his family, who still live in a camp surrounded by barbed wire. 'This portrait of the life and times of a distinguished journalist offers a penetrating insight into the world as seen from the point of view of someone born and bred a Palestinian refugee in a Gaza camp. Abdel Bari Atwan's authentic voice and sharp, descriptive writing brings alive a childhood full of life-affirming sparkle amid a lifetime spent deep in the travails of the Middle Eastern tragedy' Polly Toynbee 'Atwan's enthralling memoir charts his meteoric rise form the shoeless urchin in the 1950's to cultured commentator whose opinion is now sought all over the world ... A skilful raconteur.' Tribune Magazine

How the Word Is Passed
How the Word Is Passed

Author: Clint Smith

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2021-06-01

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 0316492914

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This “important and timely” (Drew Faust, Harvard Magazine) #1 New York Times bestseller examines the legacy of slavery in America—and how both history and memory continue to shape our everyday lives. Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves. It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving more than four hundred people. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola, a former plantation-turned-maximum-security prison in Louisiana that is filled with Black men who work across the 18,000-acre land for virtually no pay. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers. A deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country's most essential stories are hidden in plain view—whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods like downtown Manhattan, where the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women, and children has been deeply imprinted. Informed by scholarship and brought to life by the story of people living today, Smith's debut work of nonfiction is a landmark of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in making sense of our country and how it has come to be. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Winner of the Stowe Prize Winner of 2022 Hillman Prize for Book Journalism A New York Times 10 Best Books of 2021

Our Country's Good
Our Country's Good

Author: Timberlake Wertenbaker

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-03-05

Total Pages: 153

ISBN-13: 135009790X

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Australia 1789. A young married lieutenant is directing rehearsals of the first play ever to be staged in that country. With only two copies of the text, a cast of convicts, and one leading lady who may be about to be hanged, conditions are hardly ideal... Winner of the Laurence Olivier Play of the Year Award in 1988, and many other major awards, Our Country's Good premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1988 and opened on Broadway in 1991. 'Rarely has the redemptive, transcendental power of theatre been argued with such eloquence and passion.' Georgina Brown, Independent It is published here in a new Student Edition, alongside commentary and notes by Sophie Bush. The commentary includes a chronology of the play and the playwright's life and work as well as discussion of the social, political, cultural and economic context in which the play was originally conceived and created.

You Light Up Our Country
You Light Up Our Country

Author: Bob Herrin

Publisher: Tate Publishing

Published: 2010-10-12

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 1616631260

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Dr. Bob Herrin grew up on a dairy farm in Oklahoma. He was taught respect and love for others. He was energetic, enjoyed working on the farm and helping his mother. He was strong and quick and had unusual acuteness of vision and hearing. Dr. Herrin worked his way through high school, college, and medical school. He worked forty hours per week, graduated in four years and entered Medical School in Oklahoma with the highest grade point average in his class. He became a general surgeon and entered practice in Marshall, Texas in 1965. He worked a huge number of hours and took emergency call for thirty-five years. He was dedicated to his patients, family and friends. In You Light Up Our Country, Dr. Herrin presents his opinions—formed during his many years as a surgeon —on all the things he believes are affecting our country today, including collected articles from newspapers, magazines and TV, which he uses to validate his opinions and facts. He has great concern about changes in the legal system and government that he believes are injuring the people and nation. He believes his major duty as a citizen is to provide little-known truth and information that is essential to saving our country.

There Was a Country
There Was a Country

Author: Chinua Achebe

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2012-10-11

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 1101595981

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From the legendary author of Things Fall Apart—a long-awaited memoir of coming of age in a fragile new nation, and its destruction in a tragic civil war For more than forty years, Chinua Achebe maintained a considered silence on the events of the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967–1970, addressing them only obliquely through his poetry. Decades in the making, There Was a Country is a towering account of one of modern Africa’s most disastrous events, from a writer whose words and courage left an enduring stamp on world literature. A marriage of history and memoir, vivid firsthand observation and decades of research and reflection, There Was a Country is a work whose wisdom and compassion remind us of Chinua Achebe’s place as one of the great literary and moral voices of our age.

Words on Words
Words on Words

Author: David Crystal

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2000-10-15

Total Pages: 604

ISBN-13: 9780226122014

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From Homer ("winged words") to Robert Burns ("Beware a tongue that's smoothly hung") to Rudyard Kipling ("Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind"), writers from all over the world have put pen to paper on the inexhaustible topic of language. Yet surprisingly, their writings on the subject have never been gathered in a single volume. In Words on Words, David and Hilary Crystal have collected nearly 5,000 quotations about language and all its intriguing aspects: speaking, reading, writing, translation, verbosity, usage, slang, and more. As the stock-in-trade of so many professions—orators, media personalities, writers, and countless others—language's appeal as a subject is extraordinarily relevant and wide-ranging. The quotations are grouped thematically under 65 different headings, from "The Nature of Language" through the "Language of Politics" to "Quoting and Misquoting." This arrangement enables the reader to explore a topic through a variety of lenses, ancient and modern, domestic and foreign, scientific and casual, ironic and playful. Three thorough indexes—to authors, sources, and key words—provide different entry points into the collection. A valuable resource for professional writers and scholars, Words on Words is for anyone who loves language and all things linguistic.