"For someone interested in going 'beyond' with music and with guitar, this essential history will help you set your sights on places no musician has gone." -Henry Kaiser for Guitar Moderne The first and only authorized biography about Keith Rowe, his solo career, and his influence as the guitarist in the cult British improvised music band AMM, a group who counted Syd Barrett from Pink Floyd, Sonic Youth, and composer Christian Wolff as admirers. In London, in the fall of 1965, a group of four musicians, dissatisfied with the confines they had encountered in the British jazz scene, came together with a highly thought-out agenda to revolutionize the way music was created:no repertoire, no solos, no regular rhythms, no melodies, no fear of silence, 100% improvised.This rejected rules firmly in place then, as now, among even the most forward-looking of musicians. Keith Rowe was one of the founding membersof this collective. They called themselves AMM and soon added the composer Cornelius Cardew, an associate of John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, who was seeking to escape what he thought were equivalent strictures in the avant-garde classical world. As a quintet, AMM created music unlike anything else being done at the time and, being immersed in the London scene of the mid-60s in which musical boundaries were amorphous, found themselves on the one hand sharing bills with nascent bands like Pink Floyd, The Who, and Cream while on the other working with and alongside Yoko Ono and Christian Wolff. Rowe, a guitarist trained as a painter, adapted to his guitar the lessons he'd learned in the visual arts, placing it flat on a table or the ground as Jackson Pollock had done with his canvases, using it as a sound source to be approached with all manner of implements, opening up a vast new territory of exploration, one which would be enormously influential in rock and contemporary classical, as well as the field of free improvisation. Over 12 years in the making and via exhaustive research and exclusive interviews Brian Olewnick has traced Rowe's life from childhood through the present, with focuses on London's mid-60s experimental music scene, the political unrest of the late 60s, the radical politics of the early 70s, the ongoing saga of AMM through the 90s and the accompanying advance of creative music over that time period, centered around Rowe's participation in those events and his major contributions to the contemporary avant-garde environment. Through the many ups and downs of AMM and beyond, Rowe has become an eminence grise to generations of musicians and is still today continuing to push the boundaries of what is possible in the world of sound.

At a time of increased interest and renewed shock over the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, Acres of Skin sheds light on yet another dark episode of American medical history. In this disturbing expose, Allen M. Hornblum tells the story of Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison.

Ronald Wilson Reagan was born 6 Feb 1911 in Tampico, Illinois, to John Edward Reagan and Nellie Wilson. He married first Jane Wyman (nee Sarah Jane Fulks), daughter of Richard D. Fulks and Emma Reise, 24 Jan 1940 in Glendale, California. He married Nancy Davis (nee Anne Frances Robbins), daughter of Kenneth Robbins and Edith Luckett, 4 Mar 1952 in North Hollywood, California. Ancestors and relatives lived mainly in Scotland and Illinois.

“This disturbing but very important book makes clear we must dig deeper than the normal solutions we are offered.”—Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia Works "Bright Green Lies exposes the hypocrisy and bankruptcy of leading environmental groups and their most prominent cheerleaders. The best-known environmentalists are not in the business of speaking truth, or even holding up rational solutions to blunt the impending ecocide, but instead indulge in a mendacious and self-serving delusion that provides comfort at the expense of reality. They fail to state the obvious: We cannot continue to wallow in hedonistic consumption and industrial expansion and survive as a species. The environmental debate, Derrick Jensen and his coauthors argue, has been distorted by hubris and the childish desire by those in industrialized nations to sustain the unsustainable. All debates about environmental policy need to begin with honoring and protecting, not the desires of the human species, but with the sanctity of the Earth itself. We refuse to ask the right questions because these questions expose a stark truth—we cannot continue to live as we are living. To do so is suicidal folly. ‘Tell me how you seek, and I will tell you what you are seeking,’ the German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said. This is the power of Bright Green Lies: It asks the questions most refuse to ask, and in that questioning, that seeking, uncovers profound truths we ignore at our peril.”—Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of America: The Farewell Tour

Debbie Matenopoulos grew up in a traditional Greek household, eating delicious, authentic Greek cooking that her family had passed down for generations. When Debbie started her television career in New York on The View, she began eating a standard American diet. Despite carefully limiting how much she ate, she found herself gaining weight and losing energy. Debbie moved on to anchor and special correspondent positions at E! News and TV Guide Channel, then to many other roles that had her on the go all the time. It was only when she returned to her traditional Greek diet that she found herself easily—and healthily—realizing her natural weight and regaining the stamina she had as a teenager. In It's All Greek to Me: Transform Your Health the Mediterranean Way with My Family's Century-Old Recipes, Debbie shares 120 of her family's traditional Greek recipes and adds her own touch to make them even healthier and easier to prepare. After tasting Debbie’s dishes, such as her mouthwatering version of Spanakopita and her take on Fasolatha, you’ll be amazed that these delicious foods are good for you. Debbie even includes tips on how to adapt her recipes to meet any dietary needs, so all readers can enjoy her hearty meals. With a foreword by Dr. Michael Ozner, one of the nation’s leading cardiologists, the recipes in It’s All Greek to Me adhere to the healthiest diet on the planet: the traditional Mediterranean Diet. Modern science is catching up to what Greeks have known for millennia: health comes from eating natural, whole-food ingredients that haven’t been processed or pumped full of hormones, antibiotics, or preservatives. Let It’s All Greek to Me bring your friends and family together to share in the experience of a Greek meal and way of life. Opa! A portion of all proceeds will benefit the ALS Association.

It's Just Begun: The Epic Journey of DJ Disco Wiz, Hip Hop's First Latino DJ is a gritty and gripping tale of one man's struggles to not only survive, but to triumph over adversity and abuse that will make your blood run cold. By conquering unimaginable obstacles, Wiz offers inspiration to anyone who has ever wondered, "Why me?"

Searching for truth is not a search for God. It is a journey into the self and what shapes humanity on earth. Truth seeking involves deep introspection and reflection, an open mind and the courage to look into life in our society and our earth. Experiences are examined with the intention of drawing on the knowledge and experience of others to illuminate the self. Considering current world events, what understanding of Truth is emerging: illusions or realities. Along my journey, I acquired experience through my work, my career and my life. Some of it came spontaneously, while other aspects came from looking back, trying to understand what happened, how it happened. That has informed and shaped my perspective on many topics. I worked hard on the quest for certainty, the wisdom of uncertainty, the practice of humility, the art of living with paradox and the learning of compassion. As I wrote this book, I relied on my inquisitive mind and creativity to take me on a path of facts and truth-finding in my life. They became the topics of which I have written about. Some texts are a cumulation of personal information, while others are research-based, providing examples of change in our society and how one can navigate the momentum of change. As I engaged myself in interests that pique my curiosity, the focus was on examining my thoughts and broadening my perspective and awareness of human well-being. I found that writing on these various themes was humbling and generated a sense of optimism in myself, of quest for wisdom in the extraordinary time we are in. I hope the reading material is inspirational at many levels, including personal, collective and global. I believe more and more in the well-deserved rewards of aging.

Cornelius Cardew is an enigma. Depending on which sources one consults he is either an influential and iconic figure of British musical culture or a marginal curiosity, a footnote to a misguided musical phenomenon. He is both praised for his uncompromising commitment to world-changing politics, and mocked for being blindly caught up in a maelstrom of naïve political folly. His works are both widely lauded as landmark achievements of the British avant-garde and ridiculed as an archaic and irrelevant footnote to the established musical culture. Even the events of his death are shrouded in mystery and lack a sense of closure. As long ago as 1967, Morton Feldman cited Cardew as an influential figure, central to the future of modern music-making. The extent to which Cardew has been a central figure and a force for new ideas in music forms the backbone to this book. Harris demonstrates that Cardew was an original thinker, a charismatic leader, an able facilitator, and a committed activist. He argues that Cardew exerted considerable influence on numerous individuals and groups, but also demonstrates how the composer's significance has been variously underestimated, undermined and misrepresented. Cardew's diverse body of work and activity is here given coherence by its sharing in the values and principles that underpinned the composer's world view. The apparently disparate and contradictory episodes of Cardew's career are shown to be fused by a cohesive 'Cardew aesthetic' that permeates the man, his politics and his music.

In basements, dingy backrooms, warehouses, and other neglected places around the world music is being made that doesn't fit neatly into popular or classical categories and genres, whose often extreme sounds and tiny concerts hover on the fringes of these commercial and cultural mainstreams. The term “underground music” as it’s being used here connects various forms of music-making that exist outside or on the fringes of mainstream institutions and culture, such as noise, free improvisation, and extreme metal. This is music that makes little money, that’s noisy and exploratory in sound and that’s largely independent from both the market and from traditional high art institutions. It sometimes exists at the fringes of these commercial and cultural institutions, as for example with experimental metal or improv, but for the most part it’s removed from the mainstream, “underground,” as we see with noise artists such as Werewolf Jerusalem or Ramleh, obscure black metal artists such as Lord Foul, and improvisers such as Maggie Nicols. In response to a lack of previous scholarly discussion, Graham provides a cultural, political, and aesthetic mapping of this broad territory. By outlining the historical background but focusing on the digital age, the underground and its fringes can be seen as based in radical anti-capitalist politics or radical aesthetics while also being tied to the political contexts and structures of late capitalism. The book explores these various ideas of separation and captures, through interviews and analysis, a critical account of both the music and the political and cultural economy of the scene.

Rhythm Changes: Jazz, Culture, Discourse explores the history and development of jazz, addressing the music, its makers, and its social and cultural contexts, as well as the various discourses – especially those of academic analysis and journalistic criticism – that have influenced its creation, interpretation, and reception. Tackling diverse issues, such as race, class, nationalism, authenticity, irony, parody, gender, art, commercialism, technology, and sound recording, the book’s perspective on artistic and cultural practices suggests new ways of thinking about jazz history. It challenges many established scholarly approaches in jazz research, providing a much-needed intervention in the current academic orthodoxies of Jazz Studies. Perhaps the most striking and distinctive aspect of the book is the extraordinary eclecticism of the wide-ranging but carefully chosen case studies and examples referenced throughout the text, from nineteenth century literature, through 1930s Broadway and film, to twentieth and twenty-first century jazz and popular music.