The list of famous singers with biographies is huge and gets longer almost every day. Even so, there are just a few books on those voices that built the solid, reliable and harmonic background for countless hits. It is hardly possible to imagine songs such as Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog,” “Don’t be Cruel,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” […]
You are browsing archives for
Tag: 1960s United States
The Rebel’s Wardrobe. The Untold Story of Menswear’s Renegade Past by gestalten et als. (eds.) (2022
Lots of items from modern men’s wardrobes come loaded with history, were featured in cult movies worn by famous actors or have a past strongly connected to popular culture. Even if many are not aware of that. Everyday apparel, such as the base cap, Dr. Marten’s boots, a pair of jeans, chinos or the leather […]
Hollywood Eden: Electric Guitars, Fast Cars, and the Myth of the California Paradise by Joel Selvin ...
By introducing numerous future songwriters, musicians, and music producers, Joel Selvin presents a very colorful and intense picture of a California long gone. When with what he calls the “University High School class of 1958” the groundwork for the powerful American pop music of the 1960s and 1970s was laid, as some of that group […]
21st Century Retro: “Mad Men” and 1960s America in Film and Television by Debarchana Baruah (2021)
Revivals of cultural and retrospectively oriented tendencies in music, fashion and design have been around for a long time. Many contemporary American and European TV productions successfully revisit the 1940s, 1950s and very often the 1960s. The shows differ greatly in their amount of historical correctness and the many important events that influence the protagonists […]
Marvel Comics Library. Avengers. Vol. 1. 1963–1965 by Kurt Busiek and Kevin Feige (2022)
Merely six months after the last XXL version of the Marvel Comics Library edition – featuring Spiderman – arrived, Taschen is out to surprise us again. This time with an equally massive edition of the most powerful superheroes that joined forces and became THE AVENGERS. Again, the first 20 (!) comic books that feature the […]
Rock’n’Roll Plays Itself: A Screen History by John Scanlan (2022)
When in the mid-1950s rock’n’roll as both commercial force and incarnation of teenage style invaded the charts and cinema screens, the new category was a bit too much for most common and well-aged (British and American) entertainment shows and representations on screen. In the early days, neither TV nor the film industry would grasp the […]
Triumph Over Containment: American Film in the 1950s by Robert P. Kolker (2021)
There are very many books on both the American post-war years and the films of the long 1950s, usually with the emphasis on a genre or a sociological topic. The book at hand, however, has a somewhat special approach, as it is preoccupied with the decade and its implications on the American public, as experienced […]
Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950–1985 by Andrew Nette and Iain McInty
Kicking off roughly in the early 1950s, British and American science fiction authors of the new breed, labeled New Wave later, brought massive changes to the genre and changed the way the future of mankind was perceived. They spoke for a growing readership that was hungry for new visions and speculative prospects, now being prepared […]
Marvel Comics Library. Spider-Man. Vol. 1. 1962–1964 by David Mandel and Ralph Macchio (eds.) (2021)
Just when you think the last TASCHEN comics themed book was a heavyweight, and one could not expect a volume any bigger and more exciting, be ready for a surprise. Comic book legends Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in the Silver Age of comics created a large pool of superheroes for Marvel, among them a […]