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Showing 1 - 7 of
7 matches in All Departments
The 1974 fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, staged in
the young nation of Zaire and dubbed the Rumble in the Jungle, was
arguably the biggest sporting event of the twentieth century. The
bout between an ascendant undefeated champ and an outspoken master
trying to reclaim the throne was a true multimedia spectacle. A
three-day festival of international music--featuring James Brown,
Miriam Makeba, and many others--preceded the fight itself, which
was viewed by a record-breaking one billion people worldwide. Lewis
A. Erenberg's new book provides a global perspective on this
singular match, not only detailing the titular fight but also
locating it at the center of the cultural dramas of the day.
TheRumble in the Jungle orbits around Ali and Foreman, placing them
at the convergence of the American Civil Rights movement and the
Great Society, the rise of Islamic and African liberation efforts,
and the ongoing quest to cast off the shackles of colonialism. With
his far-reaching take on sports, music, marketing, and mass
communications, Erenberg shows how one boxing match became nothing
less than a turning point in 1970s culture.
The evolution of New York nightlife from the Gay Nineties through
the Jazz Age was, as Lewis A. Erenberg shows, both symbol and
catalyst of America's transition out of the Victorian period.
Cabaret culture led the way to new styles of behavior and
consumption, dissolving conventional barriers between classes,
races, the sexes--even between life and art. A fabulous era of
chorus girls, jazz players, lobster palaces, and hip flasks--the
age of Sophie Tucker, Irene and Vernon Castle, and Gilda
Gray--tangos through the pages of this ground-breaking, as well as
entertaining, cultural history.
During the 1930s, swing bands combined jazz and popular music to
create large-scale dreams for the Depression generation, capturing
the imagination of America's young people, music critics, and the
music business. "Swingin' the Dream" explores that world, looking
at the racial mixing-up and musical swinging-out that shook the
nation and has kept people dancing ever since.
""Swingin' the Dream" is an intelligent, provocative study of the
big band era, chiefly during its golden hours in the 1930s; not
merely does Lewis A. Erenberg give the music its full due, but he
places it in a larger context and makes, for the most part, a
plausible case for its importance."--Jonathan Yardley, "Washington
Post Book World"
"An absorbing read for fans and an insightful view of the impact of
an important homegrown art form."--"Publishers Weekly"
" A] fascinating celebration of the decade or so in which American
popular music basked in the sunlight of a seemingly endless high
noon."--Tony Russell, "Times Literary Supplement"
The 1974 fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, staged in
the young nation of Zaire and dubbed the Rumble in the Jungle, was
arguably the biggest sporting event of the twentieth century. The
bout between an ascendant undefeated champ and an outspoken master
trying to reclaim the throne was a true multimedia spectacle. A
three-day festival of international music-featuring James Brown,
Miriam Makeba, and many others-preceded the fight itself, which was
viewed by a record-breaking one billion people worldwide. Lewis A.
Erenberg's new book provides a global perspective on this singular
match, not only detailing the titular fight but also locating it at
the center of the cultural dramas of the day. TheRumble in the
Jungle orbits around Ali and Foreman, placing them at the
convergence of the American Civil Rights movement and the Great
Society, the rise of Islamic and African liberation efforts, and
the ongoing quest to cast off the shackles of colonialism. With his
far-reaching take on sports, music, marketing, and mass
communications, Erenberg shows how one boxing match became nothing
less than a turning point in 1970s culture.
"The War in American Culture" explores the role of World War II in
the transformation of American social, cultural, and political
life.
World War II posed a crisis for American culture: to defeat the
enemy, Americans had to unite across the class, racial and ethnic
boundaries that had long divided them. Exploring government
censorship of war photography, the revision of immigration laws,
Hollywood moviemaking, swing music, and popular magazines, these
essays reveal the creation of a new national identity that was
pluralistic, but also controlled and sanitized. Concentrating on
the home front and the impact of the war on the lives of ordinary
Americans, the contributors give us a rich portrayal of family
life, sexuality, cultural images, and working-class life in
addition to detailed consideration of African Americans, Latinos,
and women who lived through the unsettling and rapidly altered
circumstances of wartime America.
Held on June 22, 1938, in Yankee Stadium, the second
Louis-Schmeling fight sparked excitement around the globe. For all
its length-the fight lasted but two minutes-it remains one of the
most memorable events in boxing history and, indeed, one of the
most significant sporting events ever. In this superb account,
Lewis A. Erenberg offers a vivid portrait of Joe Louis, Max
Schmeling, their individual careers, and their two epic fights,
shedding light on what these fighters represented to their nations,
and why their second bout took on such international importance.
Erenberg shows how in the first fight Schmeling shocked everyone
with a dramatic twelfth-round knockout of Louis, becoming a German
national hero and a (unwilling) symbol of Aryan superiority. In
fact, the second fight was seen around the world in symbolic
terms-as a match between Nazism and American democracy. Erenberg
discusses how Louis' dramatic first-round victory was a devastating
blow to Hitler, who turned on Schmeling and, during the war, had
the boxer (then serving as a paratrooper) sent on a series of
dangerous missions. Louis, meanwhile, went from being a hero of his
race-"Our Joe"-to the first black champion embraced by all
Americans, black and white, an important step forward in United
States race relations. Erenberg also describes how, after the war,
the two boxers became symbols of German-American reconciliation.
With Schmeling as a Coca Cola executive, and Louis down on his
luck, the former foes became friends, and when Louis died,
Schmeling helped pay for his funeral. Here then is a stirring and
insightful account of one of the great moments in boxing history, a
confrontation that provided global theater on an epic scale.
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