Heirloom Vegetable Gardening: A Master Gardener's Guide to Planting, Seed Saving, and Cultural History

Heirloom Vegetable Gardening: A Master Gardener's Guide to Planting, Seed Saving, and Cultural History
Average customer rating:

beyond the usual seed catalog business

Very informational and enjoyable reading

Outstanding book helps gardeners choose heirloom varieties

Heirloom Vegetable Gardening: A Master Gardener's Guide to Planting, Seed Saving, and Cultural History
William Woys Weaver
Manufacturer: Henry Holt & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
Vegetables | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0805040250

Amazon.com

William Woys Weaver has written an important book in Heirloom Vegetable Gardening--important for the kitchen gardener, the cook, the historian, and any American who might wonder what our forebears were up to when they sat down to eat. What was the food on their table? Where did it come from? How did they get it? All these questions are addressed in Weaver's elegant prose.

But there's another side to the story, and Weaver meets his reader there, too: Where is food headed, and what's an individual to do?

We have seen the rise of hybrid crops in the years since World War II. They are good for the seed business because the grower can't just let a few plants grow to seed, save the seed, then plant that seed next season. Hybridized plants don't yield seed that's true to the character of the plant, so the grower has to return to the seed rack year after year. Buying seed on a commercial level is a big deal, as is growing enough of it to meet the market. A lot of tillable land in South America isn't growing food for hungry South Americans, but growing corn seed for American farmers, and the biggest use of corn in this country is animal feed. Not many hungry South Americans get to eat corn-fed American beef and pork. In one sense, he who controls seed controls food. Or, he who owns seed owns food, and the highest bidder takes all.

Heirloom seed, then, is more than a trinket or curiosity from the past. It represents the chance of survival in the future. Should an as-yet-unknown plant virus come along and take out the American hybrid corn crop (something that has in fact come close to happening), it's the genetic diversity available in heirloom, open-pollinated seeds that will save the bacon. Governments maintain plant gene banks, but individuals can do much the same, and authors like Weaver show how.

What Weaver injects into the tale is the incredible pleasure that comes of growing heirloom crops and saving seed, and of eating from a table laden with 17th- and 18th-century foods. He shares his own history and his family's history, all of it tied up in gardening and sharing and caring. This lovely book is an extension that can reach into any garden being dug today. In other words, don't hesitate with this title, whether history, science, gardening, or a rich enthusiasm for constructive ways the individual can affect the future drives your interest. --Schuyler Ingle

Book Description

Julia Child Award for Food Reference.

Jane Grigson Award for Distinguished Scholarship.

Vast in scope and erudition; unique and enjoyable.

In this encyclopedic guide to the history and cultivation of some of America's most treasured heirloom vegetables, food historian and organic gardener Will Weaver focuses on 280 profiled varieties of 37 vegetables and discusses nearly 400 others. He shares his over thirty years of original research from historical archives as well as hands-on gardening experience to help the lay person appreciate the fascinating history of each vegetable, grow it, and incorporate it into everyday cooking.

Some 100 varieties are shown in full color and more than 200 with line drawings by Signe Sundberg Hall. Weaver traces the development of the seed-saving movement and the history of the kitchen garden in America and gives a list of commercial seed and plant stock sources, plus an extensive bibliography.

Customer Reviews:

beyond the usual seed catalog business.......2002-10-03

as an organic farmer of 8 years i strongly recommend this reading to all professionals whose selection is bound to a few seed sources. the book will infuse new knowledge in plant varieties and allow to improve your farming altogether. 2 examples are the mention of a vining watermelon which will allow treillising for better yield and the use of malabar spinach as superior in taste and ease of cultivation to all true spinaches..

Very informational and enjoyable reading.......1998-01-19

This book will inspire the successful return
of heirloom cultivars to many home gardens. A very good resource book for garden club
or school science projects.

Outstanding book helps gardeners choose heirloom varieties.......1997-11-10

Heirloom Vegetable Gardening by W.W.Weaver provides detailed descriptions of cultivation and cooking of hundreds of varieties of old and ancient food plants. His narratives are wonderful, and make very interesting reading. His tips on cultivation, though primarily focused on his region of the country, are complete and helpful. Altogether a throroughly enjoyable book, that provides insight and tremendous expertise in an area that is vitally important.

Berlin Cabaret (Studies in Cultural History)

Average customer rating:

Thoroughly excellent
Berlin Cabaret
Outstanding chronicle of a very unique period
Jelavich, mixing culture and politics

Berlin Cabaret (Studies in Cultural History)
Peter Jelavich
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Comedy | Humor | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books
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The Hot Girls of Weimar Berlin
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The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber: Weimar Berlin's Priestess of Depravity

ASIN: 0674067622

Book Description

Step into Ernst Wolzogen's Motley Theater, Max Reinhardt's Sound and Smoke, Rudolf Nelson's Chat noir, and Friedrich Hollaender's Tingel-Tangel. Enjoy Claire Waldoff's rendering of a lower-class Berliner, Kurt Tucholsky's satirical songs, and Walter Mehring's Dadaist experiments, as Peter Jelavich spotlights Berlin's cabarets from the day the curtain first went up, in 1901, until the Nazi regime brought it down.

Fads and fashions, sexual mores and political ideologies--all were subject to satire and parody on the cabaret stage. This book follows the changing treatment of these themes, and the fate of cabaret itself, through the most turbulent decades of modern German history: the prosperous and optimistic Imperial age, the unstable yet culturally inventive Weimar era, and the repressive years of National Socialism. By situating cabaret within Berlin's rich landscape of popular culture and distinguishing it from vaudeville and variety theaters, spectacular revues, prurient "nude dancing," and Communist agitprop, Jelavich revises the prevailing image of this form of entertainment.

Neither highly politicized, like postwar German Kabarett, nor sleazy in the way that some American and European films suggest, Berlin cabaret occupied a middle ground that let it cast an ironic eye on the goings-on of Berliners and other Germans. However, it was just this satirical attitude toward serious themes, such as politics and racism, that blinded cabaret to the strength of the radical right-wing forces that ultimately destroyed it. Jelavich concludes with the Berlin cabaret artists' final performances--as prisoners in the concentration camps at Westerbork and Theresienstadt.

This book gives us a sense of what the world looked like within the cabarets of Berlin and at the same time lets us see, from a historical distance, these lost performers enacting the political, sexual, and artistic issues that made their city one of the most dynamic in Europe.

Customer Reviews:

Thoroughly excellent.......2007-02-22

One caveat: this is an academic study, and you won't find the quantity or quality of photographs published in more coffee-table oriented books on the subject. That said, it is thoroughly excellent, and what you won't find in the coffee-table books is a discussion that is anywhere near as complete or insightful.

Berlin Cabaret.......2007-01-10

I bought this book because I needed research for a film script of that period. Without a doubt, for me, it contained more hard to find facts than I had ever uncovered before.
That special period of time when Adolf Hitler was about to take over Germany and The Cabarets were as avant garde as they could be, is well documented here. So are The Cabarets that opposed The Third Reich.
I'd reccomend this book to anyone who has an interest in that period.

Outstanding chronicle of a very unique period.......2001-06-30

Sadly there are few books that give one a real sense of the Weimar years in Germany when the economy collapsed, near-anarchy reigned & bourgeois morality was evaporating along with the value of the mark. Berlin was the quintessential moderne city. Literature, painting & architecture all seemed to explode into new worlds in a kind of Big Bang. This book does a masterful job of documenting the evolution of cabaret theater from the innocent reviews of the early 1920s to the biting political commentary of the late 1920s & early 1930s when the last performances succumbed to the growing influence of the national socialists (nazis). Along the way you get the syncopated nude musical reviews & stage tableaux. There's a lot of careful considered analysis, but also a great feel for the time & place. Very well written & with many fascinating illustrations.

Jelavich, mixing culture and politics.......2000-04-15

Jelavich's goal in this historical book is to relate the culture of the berlin cabaret at the turn of the century with a political context. Each chapter focuses on a different cabaret, such as Sound and Smoke, and its satires on Berlin life. The book was extremely informative following a tradition that Carl Schorske started with his book "Fin de Siecle Vienna". Though mainly easy to read, I found their was too much information at times, and it became difficult to follow the different characters that Jelavich illuminated.

Average customer rating:

Excellent synopsis of cultural history

Varieties of Cultural History
Peter Burke
Manufacturer: Cornell University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Historiography | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

Reference | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0801484928

Book Description

In this collection of essays, of which four are published here for the first time, Peter Burke explores the theory and practice of what is called "new cultural history." He focuses on the varieties of cultural history which have emerged since the writings of Jacob Burckhardt and Johan Huizinga. No new orthodoxy has emerged to replace the classic model, Burke suggests, despite the importance of innovative approaches inspired by social and cultural anthropology.

After discussing the origins and identity of cultural history, Burke explores the social history of dreams and the relation between history and social memory. He presents five case studies addressing topics in the history of early modern Italy. Each is located on the frontiers of cultural history--between learned and popular culture, between the public and the private spheres, and between the serious and the comic. Burke then turns to the encounter between Europe and the New World and to the phenomenon of cultural translation in the etymological, literal, and metaphorical senses of the term. He concludes with two theoretical investigations: one on the history of mentalities and one which asks why cultural history seems doomed to fragmentation.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent synopsis of cultural history.......2000-12-03

Peter Burke is professor of Cultural History at the University of Cambridge and is certainly one of the most prominent figures in cultural history today. This volume is a selection of his essays, most of them previously published, which will certainly bring students up to date on the current practice of cultural history. There are essays on the origins of cultural history, the cultural history of dreams, chivalry in the New World, as well as an excellent discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the history of mentalities. In another essay Burke takes the cultural concept of carnival (one he previously dealt with in his excellent "Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe") and explores it in the context of Brazilian and African societies. Although five of the twelve essays focus on the author's area of specialization --Renaissance and Early Modern Italy-- there is much broader knowledge to be gained from the volume. Burke succinctly narrates the evolution of this type of history, demonstrating the relationship between historians such as Bloch, Burckhardt and Huizinga to the social anthropologists' search for collective representations (Durkheim and Lucien Lévy-Bruhl), and ending with the myriad ways in which the discipline is practiced today. Although the book is great, I do think it would have benefited from a more thorough discussion of the "new" cultural historians such as Lynn Hunt et al.

Varieties of Javanese Religion: An Anthropological Account (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology)

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Varieties of Javanese Religion: An Anthropological Account (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology)
Andrew Beatty
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Indonesia | Asia | History | Subjects | Books

General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

Comparative Religion | Religious Studies | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

History | Religious Studies | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0521624738

Book Description

Java is famous for its combination of diverse cultural forms and religious beliefs. In this most comprehensive study of Javanese religion since Clifford Geertz's classic study, Andrew Beatty considers Javanese solutions to problems of cultural difference, and how villagers make sense of their complex, multi-layered culture. Pantheist mystics, supernaturalists, orthodox Muslims and Hindu converts at once construct contrasting faiths and create a common ground through syncretist ritual. Vividly evoking the local religious life, this book probes beyond the surface of ritual and cosmology, revealing the compromise inherent in practical religion.

Download Description

Java is famous for its combination of diverse cultural forms and religious beliefs. Andrew Beatty considers Javanese solutions to the problem of cultural difference, and explores the ways in which Javanese villages make sense of their complex and multi-layered culture. Pantheist mystics, supernaturalists, orthodox Muslims and Hindu converts at once construct contrasting faiths and create a common ground through syncretist ritual. Vividly evoking the religious life of Javanese villagers, its controversies and reconciliations, its humour and irony, its philosophical seriousness, and its formal beauty, Dr Beatty probes beyond the finished surfaces of ritual and cosmology to show the debate and compromise inherent in practical religion. This is the most comprehensive study of Javanese religion since Clifford Geertz's classic study of 1960.

Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Business

Average customer rating:

Superb combination of thought-provoking essays.

Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Business

Manufacturer: Indiana University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Customer Reviews:

Superb combination of thought-provoking essays........2001-06-07

Berth Lindfors has done an impressive job, cover to cover. There is a sucker born every minute, and unfortunately a great number of individuals are unwillingly caught up in the trade that allows showpeople to sell their tickets. This book shows how a variety of human "specimens" have been treated like animals to sell world's fairs, circuses, etc.

The authors fall short of mentioning that animals have been treated like animals too -- for example, the Bronx Zoo's exhibition of a San tribesmember in a cage with an orang-utan was demeaning for both the former and the latter. But the book shows us in a striking way the problematic nature of the human obsession with cages and the spectacle.

Amazon.com

British socialite and writer Anthony Haden-Guest has been a champion party-goer for more than 30 years. There are few people more qualified to lead a reader, as he does in The Last Party, past the velvet ropes and doorman and into the tornado of 1970s disco, drug excess, and excessive sex that was Studio 54. Unlike some of his contemporaries whose memories are dulled by years of hard living, Haden-Guest seems to actually recall many of his experiences at Studio. His book is therefore part personal memoir, part reportage.

The cast of characters includes Andy, Liza, Halston, and Bianca--no last names needed--and other luminaries etched into Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager's exclusive guest list. The anecdotes include lurid details of the revelry and stories like the one about that Halloween when two Lady Godivas were kept outside but their horse was allowed in. Haden-Guest resists the obvious urge to dish too much about the stars and instead examines the club as a social phenomenon. In his book, the front door of Studio 54 swings open just long enough to let escape the shadow of a scene that's long since seen the light of day.

Book Description

Studio 54 was the epicenter of disco culture and pre-AIDS debauchery. Now, journalist and nightworld denizen Anthony Haden-Guest takes us behind the velvet rope that separated the celebrities from the wanna-bes, into an all-night world of revelry, sensation, and decadence.

Going beyond the endless partying with Liza, Bianca, Halston, Andy, and Mick, Haden-Guest probes the seamy underside of Studio 54: the drugs, the deaths, and the corruption that eventually shuttered the club. It is the story of Studio 54's flamboyant owners, Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, who achieved early success beyond their wildest imaginings, came within a hair's breadth of great power, and then crashed and burned.

Customer Reviews:

An Incredibley Boring Book.......2006-03-20

I got this for a 'fun' read on a trip. I figured how can you go wrong with this subject? Don't ask me how, but the author manages to write a book on Studio 54 about as interesting as reading a corporate annual report. I gave it two stars only for someone who needs to know who started what club when with who's money etc etc. How dull is it? I was waiting to have my muffler replaced and had this book with me. I found myself thumbing through a Muffler Dealers Magazine instead!

Excellent Book, But Not For All Studio 54 Fans.......2004-07-22

This book is an excellent in-depth analysis of the New York City Nightworld from the disco-elite 1970s into the Club-Kids of the 1990s. The title might mislead readers into thinking this is "The Studio 54 story." This book does not focus solely on the rise and fall of Studio 54. Anthony Haden-Guest focuses on the rise and fall of the entire NYC nightclub scene, with Studio 54's Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager taking center stage.

If you are looking for a book that mainly emphasizes the celebrities, the glitz, and wild parties in Studio 54, this book may not be your cup of tea. These topics are covered, but the book emphasizes the chaotic, competitive ---and often cutthroat--- business nature of nightclubs. In doing so, Haden-Guest does a great and even job of illustrating Nightworld's sharp businessmen, the starry-eyed dreamers, the junkies, the megalomaniacs, the doormen, and the party-goers. You read the frightening ups & downs of the business players, and their mad scrambles to try and duplicate the success of Studio 54. And often, some of these key players are all the abovementioned items rolled up into one.

I was surprised to read just how unstable the nightclub business was during this "Boom" period. There was no club that matched Studio 54's once-in-a-century money making machine. But even its best competitors found numerous obstacles in running a successful night-scene, and very few lasted more than two years. You will read about the fickle Nightworld party-goers, how they tired quickly of even the hottest parties, eventually abandoning the hot club in hopes of a newer, hotter nightspot.

It is equally astounding to see how many would be entrepreneurs sought funding to duplicate Studio 54's achievements; some well equipped, others incompetent. There are the brief triumphs of Maurice Brahms, the drive of Arthur Weinstein, the mixed success of Scotty Taylor, and the sad story of Uva Hardin, the volatile dreamer that never even got a club off the ground.

You do meet the charismatic characters that inhabited Studio 54 and the surrounding clubs, including Bianca Jagger, drug runner Tom Sullivan, Mark Benecke (probably the only guy who became famous for being a club doorman), club goer Tinkerbelle, Carmen D'Alessio, legendary attorney Roy Cohn, Rudolf and His Club Kids, and Halston. The author does not merely tell you the cool stories about their doings, he illustrates how they shaped Nightworld and/or how Nightworld shaped (and sometime damaged) them.

Haden-Guest paces the story of Rubell and Schrager's unexpected success very well. Their financial boom was so intense and happened so fast that both men failed to see the potential fallout. Like many club owners, they skimmed money, only Rubell and Schrager skimmed mountains more than the average club owner, and practically egged on the IRS to investigate them. The out of control egos, the delusion of being untouchable, is all too evident in this tale. The author also illustrates the irony in Studio 54's downfall, how if Rubell and Schrager reeled in their egos just a little bit, there is a chance the Saga of Studio 54 would be an ongoing success story today.

If I could point to the one thing that I enjoyed most about The Last Party, it would be the treatment of Steve Rubell. I have seen numerous articles and documentaries of the nightclub phenomenon that paints Rubell as an eccentric visionary, a maverick, a madman? and not much else. Haden-Guest does show us the manic & drugging Rubell, but we get a keen look at the soul behind the "human perpetual-motion machine." Especially moving was that after numerous whirlwind career ups-&-downs and "Hello & G'bye" sexual encounters, Rubell, in the last years of his life, found love with Bill Hamilton.

If you are looking for a book on the glitz of Studio 54, a good source is the VH1 Behind the Music documentary aired around 1996-97. If you want an insightful look into the complex and unpredictable nature of the Nightworld phenomenon, this is the book for you.

Too Bad I am only 19.......2003-05-09

Summing up the quality of this book, and it contents, just can't be done. What I can do is shed a minute amount of light on this and the 1970's disco scene. Yes I am only 19, but from the information provided in "The Last Party," I feel like the the Elite 54, like Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager at Studio 54, twenty some years ago. Steve was so smart, he partied like no other and still managed to open up the most legendary club in history. Ian, was the quiet guy, the man who did the behind the scenes work. Only those two men could take a dungy old basement of a production studio and turn it into a commodity filled status room. If you lived during the 70's and thought '54' was just your Dad's age, then more than likely you were a pastor at the local First Church Of God. Studio 54 was about as holy and unholy as a place ever existed. It was the first stomping grounds for the strange; it was the trendy, the vogue, a melting pot like no other. As Steve referred to it as "Mixing The Salad." 54 was not just a disco; it was a place for everyone and everything. read this and you'll know what I mean! Bravo Anthony Haden-Guest!

Hard going!.......2003-03-17

I got partway through this book and started to wonder just WHAT the author was taking while he was writing it!
It is a disjointed history that darts around all over the place dropping names that appear to have little relevance to the main story. Whats more its poorly proofed - I started to spend more time trying to pick the spelling mistakes and incorrect words than read the content.Sorry a big yawn!
On the other hand the pictures are very interesting - thats what gives this tome 2 stars!

A muddled work.......2002-12-01

Readers hoping to understand Studio 54, the rise and fall of the disco phenomena, and the evolution of the New York club scene will be disappointed. The book lacks clarity, continuity between the players and clubs, and depth of analysis and explanations.

First, readers who want a Studio 54 story will be disappointed. Only about one-third of the book covers Studio 54. (For a much better explanation, see VH1's "Behind the Music" which did a 90-minute show on Studio 54.) While the story of this nightclub is told in disjointed segments with some interesting anecdotes, coverage of the celebrities and their stories is sparse, the role of the founders is incompletely explained, and the rise and fall of the club's fortune with Disco lacks analysis. The story is interesting, but incomplete. You will not have all of your questions answered.

Book Description

A disrobing acrobat, a female Hamlet, and a tuba-playing labor activist—all these women come to life in Rank Ladies. In this comprehensive study of women in vaudeville, Alison Kibler reveals how female performers, patrons, and workers shaped the rise and fall of the most popular live entertainment at the turn of the century.

Kibler focuses on the role of gender in struggles over whether high or low culture would reign in vaudeville, examining women's performances and careers in vaudeville, their status in the expanding vaudeville audience, and their activity in the vaudevillians' labor union. Respectable women were a key to vaudeville's success, she says, as entrepreneurs drew women into audiences that had previously been dominated by working-class men and recruited female artists as performers. But although theater managers publicly celebrated the cultural uplift of vaudeville and its popularity among women, in reality their houses were often hostile both to female performers and to female patrons and home to women who challenged conventional understandings of respectable behavior. Once a sign of vaudeville's refinement, Kibler says, women became associated with the decay of vaudeville and were implicated in broader attacks on mass culture as well.

Steppin' Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture
Average customer rating:

wonderful

Steppin' Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture
Lewis A. Erenberg
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | 19th Century | United States | Americas | History | Subjects | Books
General | United States | Americas | History | Subjects | Books
General | State & Local | United States | Americas | History | Subjects | Books
New York | State & Local | United States | Americas | History | Subjects | Books
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General | Americas | History | Subjects | Books
Social History | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books
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All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
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ASIN: 0226215156

Book Description

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.

Customer Reviews:

wonderful.......2003-12-01

there simply isn't a better resource on the topic of nightclubs and other popular entertainment in NYC during this time. i highly recommend it.

Swinging At The Savoy The Memoir of a Jazz Dancer

Average customer rating:

Fluffy but Fun
True Original
For the true lindy hopper... the first book of choice.
Very Good Swing Dance Book

Swinging At The Savoy The Memoir of a Jazz Dancer
Norma Miller , and Evette Jensen
Manufacturer: Temple University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

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Frankie Manning: Ambassador of Lindy Hop
Stompin' at the Savoy: The Story of Norma Miller
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The Swing Book

ASIN: 1566398495

Book Description

Dancer, award-winning choreographer, show producer, stand-up comedienne, TV/film actress and author, Norma Miller shares her touching historical memoir of Harlem's legendary Savoy Ballroom and the phenomenal music and dance craze that "spread the power of Swing across the world like Wildfire."

It was a time when the music was Swing, and Harlem was king. Renowned as 'the world's most beautiful ballroom" and the largest, most elegant in Harlem, the Savoy was the only ballroom not segregated when it opened in 1926. The Savoy hosted the best bands and attracted the best dancers by offering the challenge of fierce competition. White people traveled uptown to learn exciting new dance styles. A dance contest winner by fourteen, Norma Miller became a member of Herbert White's world-famous Lindy Hoppers and a celebrated Savoy Ballroom Lindy Hop champion.

Swingin' at the Savoy chronicles a significant period in American cultural history and race relations, as it glorifies the popularized home of the Lindy Hop, and the birthplace of such memorable dance fads as the Big Apple, Shag, Truckin', Peckin', Susie Q, Charleston, Peabody, Black Bottom, Cake Walk, Boogie Woogie, Shimmy, and tap dancing.

Miller shares fascinating anecdotes about her youthful encounters with many of the greatest jazz legends in music history including Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Artie Shaw, Duke Ellington, Ethel Waters, and even boxer Joe Louis.

Customer Reviews:

Fluffy but Fun.......2003-06-21

In the 1930s and 1940s, Swing jazz captivated America in a way no musical style ever had before. Swing was largely developed in Harlem and its driving beat made dance an inevitable component of this new music. The new dance created was the lindy hop, a non-classic couples dance largely created on the floor of the Savoy Ballroom.

Swinging at the Savoy traces the life of Harlemite Norma Miller, who came of age just at the perfect time to invest her entire future in a faddish dance despite protests from her disapproving mother.

Of course, Norma beat the odds and made a decent living as a performer, but this is not what the book is about. The real draw of this book is the chance to glean musical and dance history straight from the horses mouth. Indeed, Norma discusses the bands, the clientele, the lifestyle, the celebrities she met, and racial issues, but more often than not the bubbly Norma gets caught up in the warmth of her very dear memories.

Swinging at the Savoy follows Norma through innumerable dance
performances, which were far from dull thanks to infectious Norma's joy and enthusiasm for dance. However, I would have preferred that her performances had been given a bit less weight and more had been included a few more anecdotes on Duke Ellington and Chick Webb, more discussion on issues such as the development of the music and dance, and how interracial dancing was possible in the dark ages of the 1930s.

Of course, the book is subtitled The Memoir of a Jazz Dancer and so I cannot really fault the book for putting the events of Norma's life at the center. Furthermore, the book is prefaced with an excellent essay by jazz expert Ernie Smith that provides a solid historical perspective on the music and dance of Swing.

Swinging at the Savoy is a breeze to read and includes a good number of photographs that help bring the book to life. I recommend this book to anyone interested in African-American culture, jazz, dance, or U.S. history.

True Original.......2001-03-29

Norma Miller, the youngest member of the original swing dance troupe, Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, had to do some sneaking around in order to dance at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem some 60-odd years ago.

If the spunk she has now is any indication of what she was like at 15, though, it's no surprise she helped invent a whole new dance form.

This down-to-earth personal memoir by an effervescent woman whose first and last love is the excitement of swing is an invigorating read for almost anyone.

It might make you want to drop everything and go out and dance . . .or it might just give you a better understanding of the history of Harlem and the extraordinary people who helped keep it on the map all these years with their artistic spirits and rich energy.

For the true lindy hopper... the first book of choice........1999-01-21

Forget those neo-swing books... this is the one to get if you want to know about the tales and stories from the start of it all. Wonderfully told from a first person account...

Very Good Swing Dance Book.......1998-12-25

Norma Miller is one of the Whitey's Lindy Hoppers who danced at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. It has some nice Pictures and some great information ,although it is about her personal bio at the Savoy and other dance spots she was in over the years, it is a little biased about Norma (understandably) and The role that she and the Hoppers played in the Making of popular Lindy Hop. It could have had more stories about the other dancers and places. It is however a major recomendation for any Swing Dancer/Fan.

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