Resources By Department: New Books: Fine Arts (Art, Music, Theater)

Anatomy of 55 More Songs by Marc Myers
Songs that sell the most copies become hits, but some of those hits become something more--iconic recordings that not only inspire a generation but also change the direction of music. In Anatomy of 55 More Songs, based on his column for the Wall Street Journal, music journalist and historian Marc Myers tells the story behind fifty-five rock, pop, R&B, country, and soul-gospel hits through intimate interviews with the artists who wrote and recorded them. Part oral history, part musical analysis, Anatomy of 55 More Songs provides a sweeping look at the evolution of pop music between 1964 and today.
Room to Dream by David Lynch; Kristine McKenna
In this unique hybrid of biography and memoir, David Lynch opens up for the first time about a life lived in pursuit of his singular vision, and the many heartaches and struggles he's faced to bring his unorthodox projects to fruition. Lynch's lyrical, intimate, and unfiltered personal reflections riff off biographical sections written by close collaborator Kristine McKenna and based on more than one hundred new interviews with surprisingly candid ex-wives, family members, actors, agents, musicians, and colleagues in various fields who all have their own takes on what happened.
60 Songs That Explain The '90s by Rob Harvilla
The 1990s were a chaotic and gritty and utterly magical time for music, a confounding barrage of genres and lifestyles and superstars, from grunge to hip-hop, from sumptuous R&B to rambunctious ska-punk, from Axl to Kurt to Missy to Santana to Tupac to Britney. In 60 Songs That Explain the '90s, music critic Rob Harvilla reimagines all the earwormy, iconic hits Gen Xers pine for with vivid historical storytelling, sharp critical analysis, rampant loopiness, and wryly personal ruminations on the most bizarre, joyous, and inescapable songs from a decade we both regret entirely and miss desperately.
The Revolution Is Dead - Long Live the Revolution by Michael Baumgärtner (Editor); Kathleen Buehler (Editor)
This book highlights the strikingly innovative artistic spirit of the Russian avant-garde, along with the "Socialist Realism" that became established after the revolution. It addresses the radical conceptions of the revolutionary artistic movements of the early 20th century and their significance for the breakthroughs to abstraction and Constructivism. It also traces the implications and the traces of "Socialist Realism" as an ideologically motivated pictorial formula up to the present day.
Ai Weiwei by Susanne Gaensheimer (Editor); Doris Krystof (Editor); Falk Wolf (Editor)
Born in Beijing in 1957, Ai Weiwei is celebrated worldwide as an artist, architect, curator, film director, and photographer. His working method critically examines cultural history and global social developments. With texts and images, this catalog demonstrates the close interweaving of political commitment and artistic work in the œuvre of this important, controversial artist who lends form to the contradictions of our present times.

Revolutions in American Music by Michael Broyles
In Revolutions in American Music, award-winning author Michael Broyles shows the surprising ways in which three key decades--the 1840s, the 1920s, and the 1950s--shaped America's musical future. Drawing connections between new styles of music like the minstrel show, jazz, and rock 'n' roll, and emerging technologies like the locomotive, the first music recordings, and the transistor radio, Broyles argues that these decades fundamentally remade our cultural landscape in enduring ways. At the same time, these connections revealed racial fault lines running through the business of music, in an echo of American society as a whole.
She Come by It Natural by Sarah Smarsh
Growing up amid Kansas wheat fields and airplane factories, Sarah Smarsh witnessed firsthand the vulnerabilities and strengths of women in working poverty. Meanwhile, country songs by female artists played in the background, telling powerful stories about life, men, hard times, and surviving. Country music was a language among women-- and no one provided that language better than Dolly Parton. Here Smarsh explores the overlooked contributions to social progress by such women as exemplified by Dolly Parton's life and art. She shows how Parton's songs offer a springboard to examining the intersections of gender, class, and culture.
Dreaming in Ensemble by Lucy Caplan
The inauguration of a "golden age" in Black opera is often dated to 1955, when Marian Anderson became the first Black singer to perform in a leading role at New York's Metropolitan Opera. Yet Anderson's debut was actually preceded by a rich Black operatic tradition that developed in the first half of the twentieth century. Lucy Caplan tells the stories of the Black composers, performers, critics, teachers, and students who created this vibrant opera culture, even as they were excluded from the genre's most prominent institutions. Their movement redefined opera as a wellspring of aesthetic innovation, sociality, and antiracist activism.
Suzuki by Eri Hotta
The name Shinichi Suzuki is synonymous with early childhood musical education. By the time of his death in 1998, countless children around the world had been taught using his methods, with many more to follow. Yet Suzuki's life and the evolution of his educational vision remain largely unexplored. A committed humanist, he was less interested in musical genius than in imparting to young people the skills and confidence to learn. He fostered a pedagogy founded on the conviction that all children possess tremendous capacity to learn. Eri Hotta details Suzuki's unconventional musical development and the emergence of his philosophy.
Goodbye Russia by Fiona Maddocks
Sergei Rachmaninoff left Petrograd in 1917 in the throes of the Russian Revolution. He was 44 years old, at the peak of his powers as composer-conductor-performer. He had already written the music which, today, has made him one of the most popular composers of all time: the second and third Piano Concertos and two symphonies. Yet the melancholy of leaving his homeland never lifted. In 1940 Rachmaninoff, living in exile in America, broke his creative silence and composed a swan song to his Russian homeland. What happened in those final haunted years and how did he come to write his farewell masterpiece, the Symphonic Dances?

New Books: Fine Arts (Art, Music, Theater)

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