The Leon Lewis Band is the story of a rock band in the sixties and seventies. It traces the lives of the fascinating characters who comprise the band—the musicians as well as family, friends, and other unique characters they meet along the way. The story is narrated by Jackie Klein, the childhood friend of Leon Lewis. It begins in the working-class Brooklyn neighborhood of the fifties and sixties, which binds the two Jewish boys together as they navigate the anti-Semitism and racist battleground of their inner-city environment. Leon Lewis’s life is deeply impacted by his family—an emotionally disturbed mother, a high-achieving younger sister, and a father who blames his wife for preventing him from achieving his dream of becoming a professional jazz musician. Lee’s family struggles drive him to leave the city as soon as he finishes high school. He takes to the road with his acoustic guitar and musical ability. While Lee is gone, Jackie hooks up with three amazing musicians at Café Flo in Greenwich Village. When Lee returns, now a seasoned troubadour and accomplished musician, he reconnects with Jackie, and the Leon Lewis Band is formed. Along the way, they find a flamboyant country boy, a hippie manager, a smooth café manager, an eccentric concert promotor and recording engineer, and the loves of their lives. Catalina Blake is a sensuous young Latina and a budding, progressive journalist. When she falls in love with Lee, the band’s surprising events ensue. On the behalf of her estranged father, a talented artist, she finds herself on a dangerous mission to Central America, where her family secrets intersect with Lee and the band and with the ghosts from Lee’s old neighborhood.

The Leon Lewis Band is the story of a rock band in the sixties and seventies. It traces the lives of the fascinating characters who comprise the band - the musicians as well as family, friends, and other unique characters they meet along the way. The story is narrated by Jackie Klein, the childhood friend of Leon Lewis. It begins in the working-class Brooklyn neighborhood of the fifties and sixties, which binds the two Jewish boys together as they navigate the anti-Semitism and racist battleground of their inner-city environment. Leon Lewis's life is deeply impacted by his family - an emotionally disturbed mother, a high-achieving younger sister, and a father who blames his wife for preventing him from achieving his dream of becoming a professional jazz musician. Lee's family struggles drive him to leave the city as soon as he finishes high school. He takes to the road with his acoustic guitar and musical ability. While Lee is gone, Jackie hooks up with three amazing musicians at Cafe Flo in Greenwich Village. When Lee returns, now a seasoned troubadour and accomplished musician, he reconnects with Jackie, and the Leon Lewis Band is formed. Along the way, they find a flamboyant country boy, a hippie manager, a smooth cafe manager, an eccentric concert promoter and recording engineer, and the loves of their lives. Catalina Blake is a sensuous young Latina and a budding, progressive journalist. When she falls in love with Lee, the band's surprising events ensue. On the behalf of her estranged father, a talented artist, she finds herself on a dangerous mission to Central America, where her family secrets intersect with Lee and the band and with the ghosts from Lee's old neighborhood.

In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.

By any standards, the Kings of Leon are unique. Consisting of three brothers and their first cousin, all surnamed Followill, the quartet from a God-fearing Tennessee background has conquered the music world on their own terms. They have audaciously mixed elements of classic rock with grunge, garage and a very contemporary attitude. The result is music that has found a ready audience between 15 and 50. It has also been used in several significant movie soundtracks, accelerating their rise. Their song- writing skills have earned the admiration of none other than Bob Dylan himself. This first-ever full-length, authoritative biography of the band, by Michael Heatley, traces their rise from local hopefuls to US Hot Modern Rock chart-toppers (singles 'Sex On Fire', 'Use Somebody', and 'Notion' all reached Number 1) with the platinum album Only by the Night. A background and lifestyle that kept them well away from popular music until 1997, when their father sensationally resigned from the church and divorced their mother, has produced some fascinating results. Exposure to the rock'n'roll lifestyle led to crises that have had to be resolved as a band and as individuals, and The Kings of Leon: Sex On Firerecounts them all.

In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.

A Progressive History of American Democracy Since 1945: American Dreams, Hard Realities offers a social, political, and cultural history of the United States since World War II. Unpacking a period of profound transformation unprecedented in the national experience, this book takes a synthetic approach to the history of the 1940s to the present day. It examines how Americans descended from a mid-century apogee of boundless expectations to the unsettling premise that our contemporary historical moment is fraught with a sense of crisis and national failure. The book’s narrative explores the question of decline and more importantly, how the history of this transformation can point the way toward a recovery of shared national values. Chris J. Magoc also gives extensive treatments to the following: Grassroots movements that have expanded the meaning of American democracy, from the 1950s human rights struggle in the South to contemporary movements to confront systemic racism and the existential crisis of climate change. The resilience of American democracy in the face of antidemocratic forces. The impacts of a decades-long economic transformation. The consequences of America’s expanding global military footprint and national security state. Fracturing of a nation once held together by a post-war liberal consensus and broadly shared societal goals to an America facing an attack from within on empirical truth and democracy itself. This book will be of interest to students of modern U.S. history, social history, and American Studies, and general readers interested in recent U.S. history.

A 2018 FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE “[Hitler in Los Angeles] is part thriller and all chiller, about how close the California Reich came to succeeding” (Los Angeles Times). No American city was more important to the Nazis than Los Angeles, home to Hollywood, the greatest propaganda machine in the world. The Nazis plotted to kill the city's Jews and to sabotage the nation's military installations: Plans existed for murdering twenty-four prominent Hollywood figures, such as Al Jolson, Charlie Chaplin, and Louis B. Mayer; for driving through Boyle Heights and machine-gunning as many Jews as possible; and for blowing up defense installations and seizing munitions from National Guard armories along the Pacific Coast. U.S. law enforcement agencies were not paying close attention--preferring to monitor Reds rather than Nazis--and only attorney Leon Lewis and his daring ring of spies stood in the way. From 1933 until the end of World War II, Lewis, the man Nazis would come to call “the most dangerous Jew in Los Angeles,” ran a spy operation comprised of military veterans and their wives who infiltrated every Nazi and fascist group in Los Angeles. Often rising to leadership positions, they uncovered and foiled the Nazi's disturbing plans for death and destruction. Featuring a large cast of Nazis, undercover agents, and colorful supporting players, the Los Angeles Times bestselling Hitler in Los Angeles, by acclaimed historian Steven J. Ross, tells the story of Lewis's daring spy network in a time when hate groups had moved from the margins to the mainstream.

A DIRECTORY ONLY OF COUNTRY MUSIC ARTISTS AND THEIR NOSTALGIC BACKING GROUPS FROM THE 1920s TO THE PRESENT

A big, open-it-anywhere book created for music fans and pop-culture followers of all ages, The Band Name Book explains how (or where) the best-named bands in history got their names. Those names are profound, clever, silly, provocative or downright obscure. This entertaining book is full of information and trivia about bands from the dawn of rock 'n' roll right up to today's Internet-based independents. The Beatles are here, as well as Led Zeppelin, Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails and the Goo Goo Dolls. But the best fun is found with rock history's lesser-known groups, in Web-savvy contemporary bands, and with true originals. Among their names: Atomic Rooster Arctic Monkeys The Lemonheads The Formaldebrides The Soup Dragons Pavlov's Woody Arcade Fire Big Al and the Kaholics Hectic Watermelon Smorgasborgnine. The Band Name Book includes entries on thousands of bands from more than 30 countries, divided into dozens of entertaining and irreverent categories with special notes on name origins, genres and best album titles. There are profiles of notable bands. And there's even a list of "Names Still Available" for each category. Colour throughout