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American Rhapsody: Writers, Musicians, Movie Stars, And One Great Building
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN13:
9780374536947
$20.00
$18.38
The stories of AmericaÆs most extraordinary strivers and their failures and triumphs Ranging from the shattered gentility of Edith WhartonÆs heroines to racial confrontation in the songs of Nina Simone, American Rhapsody presents a kaleidoscopic story of the creation of a culture. Here is a series of deeply involving portraits of American artists and innovators who have helped to shape the country in the modern age. Claudia Roth Pierpont expertly mixes biography and criticism, history and reportage, to bring these portraits to life and link them in surprising ways. It isnÆt far from WhartonÆs brave new women to F. Scott FitzgeraldÆs giddy flappers, and on to the big-screen command of Katharine Hepburn and the dangerous dames of Dashiell HammettÆs hard-boiled world. The improvisatory jazziness of George GershwinÆs Rhapsody in Blue has its counterpart in the great jazz baby of the New York skyline, the Chrysler Building. Questions of an American acting style are traced from Orson Welles to Marlon Brando, while the new American painting emerges in the gallery of Peggy Guggenheim. And we trace the arc of racial progress from Bert WilliamsÆs blackface performances to James BaldwinÆs warning of the fire next time, however slow and bitter and anguished this progress may be. American Rhapsody offers a history of twentieth-century American invention and genius. It is about the joy and profit of being a heterogeneous people, and the immense difficulty of this human experiment.
- | Author: Claudia Roth Pierpont
- | Publisher: Farrar, Straus And Giroux
- | Publication Date: May 09, 2017
- | Number of Pages: 320 pages
- | Language: English
- | Binding: Paperback/Literary Collections
- | ISBN-10: 0374536945
- | ISBN-13: 9780374536947
- Author:
- Claudia Roth Pierpont
- Publisher:
- Farrar, Straus And Giroux
- Publication Date:
- May 09, 2017
- Number of pages:
- 320 pages
- Language:
- English
- Binding:
- Paperback/Literary Collections
- ISBN-10:
- 0374536945
- ISBN-13:
- 9780374536947