At the height of the Cold War in 1954, President Eisenhower inaugurated a program of cultural exchange that sent American dancers and other artists to political "hot spots" overseas. This peacetime gambit by a warrior hero was a resounding success.Among the artists chosen for international duty were José Limón, who led his company on the first government-sponsored tour of South America; Martha Graham, whose famed ensemble crisscrossed southeast Asia; Alvin Ailey, whose company brou...

Cultural commentator John Strausbaugh's The Village is the first complete history of Greenwich Village, the prodigiously influential and infamous New York City neighborhood.From the Dutch settlers and Washington Square patricians, to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and Prohibition-era speakeasies; from Abstract Expressionism and beatniks, to Stonewall and AIDS, the connecting narratives of The Village tell the story of America itself.Illustrated with historic...

Some samples: 1) When the United States was fighting the war in Vietnam, a sergeant wrote famed photographer Yousuf Karsh and requested a copy of a portrait that he had taken of Eleanor Roosevelt. Mr. Karsh wondered why a young man would be interested in a portrait of a woman who had been First Lady before he was born, so he wrote the soldier. As it turned out, the soldier was not young, but instead he was a career soldier who had been wounded in the Korean War. Ms. Roosevelt had visited h...

"Mind-opening, thought-provoking and incredibly timely… An absolutely spectacular read."—Cory Doctorow, BoingBoingA million listeners trust NPR's Brooke Gladstone to guide them through the complexities of the modern media. Bursting onto the page in vivid comics by acclaimed artist Josh Neufeld, this brilliant radio personality guides us through two millennia of media history, debunking the notion that "The Media" is an external force beyond our control and...

“Behind almost every painting is a fortune and behind that a sin or a crime.”With these words as a starting point, Michael Gross, leading chronicler of the American rich, begins the first independent, unauthorized look at the saga of the nation’s greatest museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In this endlessly entertaining follow-up to his bestselling social history 740 Park, Gross pulls back the shades of secrecy that have long shrouded the upper class’s...

**Winner of the Chicago Tribune‘s 2013 Heartland PrizeA critically acclaimed history of Chicago at mid-century, featuring many of the incredible personalities that shaped American culture**Before air travel overtook trains, nearly every coast-to-coast journey included a stop in Chicago, and this flow of people and commodities made it the crucible for American culture and innovation. In luminous prose, Chicago native Thomas Dyja re-creates the story of the city in i...

Acclaimed national security columnist and noted cultural critic Fred Kaplan looks past the 1960s to the year that really changed AmericaWhile conventional accounts focus on the sixties as the era of pivotal change that swept the nation, Fred Kaplan argues that it was 1959 that ushered in the wave of tremendous cultural, political, and scientific shifts that would play out in the decades that followed. Pop culture exploded in upheaval with the rise of artis...

Some samples: • In September 2008, James Meeks, a Baptist minister and state senator, organized an impressive act of activism. He led a boycott of Chicago Public Schools by nearly 1,000 students and instead bused them to two affluent North Shore schools. His purpose was to show the differences in funding and quality of education in the schools in different areas of Illinois. According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, "In a funding system fueled largely by local property taxes, New Tri...

Some samples: 1) In 2008 in San Francisco, a group known as the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco wanted to change the name of the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant. Because of President George W. Bush's record as overseer of the country's welfare, they wanted the sewage treatment plant's name changed to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant. To do that, they submitted to San Francisco election officials over 10,000 signatures in order to get their initiative on the ballot....

The life, times, and travels of a remarkable instrument and the people who have made, sold, played, and cherished it.A 16-ounce package of polished wood, strings, and air, the violin is perhaps the most affordable, portable, and adaptable instrument ever created. As congenial to reels, ragas, Delta blues, and indie rock as it is to solo Bach and late Beethoven, it has been played standing or sitting, alone or in groups, in bars, churches, concert halls, lumber camps, even concentra...

In this lively narrative, award-winning author Michael Kammen presents a fascinating analysis of cutting-edge art and artists and their unique ability to both delight and provoke us. He illuminates America’s obsession with public memorials and the changing role of art and museums in our society. From Thomas Eakins’s 1875 masterpiece The Gross Clinic, (considered “too big, bold, and gory” when first exhibited) to the bitter disputes about Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial, this is an...

If the opera world is full of “intrigue, double meanings, and devious dramatics,” then no place exemplifies this more than the world-famous Metropolitan Opera, where politics, ambition, and oversized egos have traditionally taken center stage along with some of the world’s richest music. Drawing on her fifteen years as its press representative, Johanna Fiedler explodes the traditional secrecy that surrounds the Met in this wonderfully entertaining account of its tumuluous history.F...