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Author: John Leland
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2007
Total Pages: 232
ISBN-13: 9780670063253
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA lighthearted discussion of On the Road profiles Kerouac's classic work as a timeless coming-of-age primer, in a literary study that focuses on the character of Sal Paradise and the lessons he imparts about such topics as work, sex, and spirituality.
Author: Craig Conley
Publisher: Weiser Books
Published: 2008-10-01
Total Pages: 364
ISBN-13: 1609250508
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMagic Words: A Dictionary is a oneofakind resource for armchair linguists, popculture enthusiasts, Pagans, Wiccans, magicians, and trivia nuts alike. Brimming with the most intriguing magic words and phrases from around the world and illustrated throughout with magical symbols and icons, Magic Words is a dictionary like no other. More than sevenhundred essay style entries describe the origins of magical words as well as historical and popular variations and fascinating trivia. With sources ranging from ancient Medieval alchemists to modern stage magicians, necromancers, and wizards of legend to miracle workers throughout time, Magic Words is a must have for any scholar of magic, language, history, and culture.
Author: Mary Helen Ponce
Publisher: Arte Publico Press
Published: 2008-09-30
Total Pages: 208
ISBN-13: 1611923077
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAlthough Blanca MuÐoz has known Sammy-the-Cricket all of her life, she never considered him boyfriend material until the summer she turned eighteen. HeÍs not particularly good looking, he doesnÍt drive a fancy car, he doesnÍt dance well, and he doesnÍt have a good job. Worst of all, he wears zoot suits and belongs to the Los Tacones gang. Blanca has always promised herself she would avoid guys like Cricket. But itÍs CricketÍs meanness that attracts Blanca the most. And before she knows it he proposes: ñYouÍre my old lady and weÍre gonna get hitched.î The chicks and pachucos in BlancaÍs barrio of Taconos outside of Los Angeles compete to put on the best wedding, even if it means paying off the expenses in monthly installments for years to come. Blanca works overtime for months prior to her wedding so she can afford everything, especially since Cricket refuses to help financially. The bride-to-be and her girlfriends obsess over the elaborate arrangements required of a Mexican wedding: who will be the maid of honor, ring bearer, and junior bridesmaid? What about the dress, the shoes, and the cushions the couple will kneel on during mass? The list of things to do is endless, and Blanca is more exhausted every day. On top of everything, Blanca finds herself feeling hungry all the time. Her expanding waistline means that her wedding dress wonÍt fit, but at least itÍs not a problem that a few safety pins wonÍt solve. Meanwhile, the guys are also interested in keeping up appearances. Cricket dreams of a wedding that outclasses all the others and raises his status with his buddies: a long line of souped-up, gleaming cars; guys decked out in the sharpest tuxedos; and most important of all, the best dance, where he and his friends plan to get high and rumble with Los Pachucos, the rival gang in the neighborhood. The wedding dance turns out to be the best party imaginable as the band plays on through a series of exciting moments: the maid of honor gets in a fight with a girl from ñup northî; the leader of Los Pachuchos and his buddies show up, determined to ñdanceî at CricketÍs wedding; and Blanca, after spending most of the evening in the bathroom, isunnoticed by most of the guestsfinally taken away in an ambulance. It was ñthe best wedding in all of Taconos,î she says right before passing out.
Author: Jennifer McKnight-Trontz
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 1999-07-30
Total Pages: 132
ISBN-13: 9780312201333
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTake a giddy guided tour through the greatest moments of 1950s and 1960s spage-age pop and exotica. From newly rediscovered musicians like Esquivel and Yma Sumac to lesser-knowns like Markko Polo Adventurers, this collection of bizarre and fascinating vintage musical ephemera with enthrall both the serious collector and the neo-Swinger weekend enthusiast. Exotiquarium supplies information about the artists (both musical and visual), the (mood) music they created, definitions of the odd instruments they used to create these strage and beautiful sounds (like the theremin), and much more. Complete with a foreward by Lenny Dee-Decca recording artist and "Organ Lounge Master"--Exotiquarium offers a vibrant portrait of this surreal time in American music history. A must-have for lounge lizards young and old.
Author: Louis A. Pérez Jr.
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Published: 2012-09-01
Total Pages: 602
ISBN-13: 1469601419
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWith this masterful work, Louis A. Perez Jr. transforms the way we view Cuba and its relationship with the United States. On Becoming Cuban is a sweeping cultural history of the sustained encounter between the peoples of the two countries and of the ways that this encounter helped shape Cubans' identity, nationality, and sense of modernity from the early 1850s until the revolution of 1959. Using an enormous range of Cuban and U.S. sources--from archival records and oral interviews to popular magazines, novels, and motion pictures--Perez reveals a powerful web of everyday, bilateral connections between the United States and Cuba and shows how U.S. cultural forms had a critical influence on the development of Cubans' sense of themselves as a people and as a nation. He also articulates the cultural context for the revolution that erupted in Cuba in 1959. In the middle of the twentieth century, Perez argues, when economic hard times and political crises combined to make Cubans painfully aware that their American-influenced expectations of prosperity and modernity would not be realized, the stage was set for revolution.
Author: Louis A. Pérez
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 579
ISBN-13: 9780807858998
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWith this masterful work, Louis A. Pĩrez Jr. transforms the way we view Cuba and its relationship with the United States. On Becoming Cuban is a sweeping cultural history of the sustained encounter between the peoples of the two countries and of t
Author: Gustavo Pérez Firmat
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2012-05-01
Total Pages: 255
ISBN-13: 0292735995
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn expanded, updated edition of the classic study of Cuban-American culture, this engaging book, which mixes the author’s own story with his reflections as a trained observer, explores how both famous and ordinary members of the “1.5 Generation” (Cubans who came to the United States as children or teens) have lived “life on the hyphen”—neither fully Cuban nor fully American, but a fertile hybrid of both. Offering an in-depth look at Cuban-Americans who have become icons of popular and literary culture—including Desi Arnaz, Oscar Hijuelos, musician Pérez Prado, and crossover pop star Gloria Estefan, as well as poets José Kozer and Orlando González Esteva, performers Willy Chirino and Carlos Oliva, painter Humberto Calzada, and others—Gustavo Pérez Firmat chronicles what it means to be Cuban in America. The first edition of Life on the Hyphen won the Eugene M. Kayden National University Press Book Award and received honorable mentions for the Modern Language Association’s Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize and the Latin American Studies Association’s Bryce Wood Book Award.
Author: Jack Kerouac
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1976-12-28
Total Pages: 321
ISBN-13: 1101127570
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJack Kerouac’s classic American novel of freedom and the search for originality that defined a generation “An authentic work of art.”—The New York Times Inspired by Jack Kerouac’s adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends whose cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naïveté and wild abandon and imbued with Kerouac’s love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz, On the Road is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hope—a book that changed American literature and changed anyone who has ever picked it up.
Author: Josephine Powell
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Published: 2010-08-01
Total Pages: 428
ISBN-13: 1452072744
DOWNLOAD EBOOKErnesto "Tito" Puente born in 1923 in Spanish Harlem is a tale about an impoverished Puerto Rican boy who grew up with the advent of radio and American swing bands. At age ten he aspired to be a dancer: another Fred Astaire. An ankle injury gave him the opportunity to explore his talent as a musician. At fourteen he won the coveted Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa drum contest.
Author: Larry Birnbaum
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Published: 2012-12-14
Total Pages: 475
ISBN-13: 0810886294
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn essential work for rock fans and scholars, Before Elvis: The Prehistory of Rock ‘n’ Roll surveys the origins of rock ’n’ roll from the minstrel era to the emergence of Bill Haley and Elvis Presley. Unlike other histories of rock, Before Elvis offers a far broader and deeper analysis of the influences on rock music. Dispelling common misconceptions, it examines rock’s origins in hokum songs and big-band boogies as well as Delta blues, detailing the embrace by white artists of African-American styles long before rock ’n’ roll appeared. This unique study ranges far and wide, highlighting not only the contributions of obscure but key precursors like Hardrock Gunter and Sam Theard but also the influence of celebrity performers like Gene Autry and Ella Fitzgerald. Too often, rock historians treat the genesis of rock ’n’ roll as a bolt from the blue, an overnight revolution provoked by the bland pop music that immediately preceded it and created through the white appropriation of music till then played only by and for black audiences. In Before Elvis, Birnbaum daringly argues a more complicated history of rock’s evolution from a heady mix of ragtime, boogie-woogie, swing, country music, mainstream pop, and rhythm-and-blues—a melange that influenced one another along the way, from the absorption of blues and boogies into jazz and pop to the integration of country and Caribbean music into rhythm-and-blues. Written in an easy style, Before Elvis presents a bold argument about rock’s origins and required reading for fans and scholars of rock ’n’ roll history.
