An Indian-fighting officer carries on, facing danger and risking disgrace...

Humanity has blown horns and trumpets of various makes and models, lengths and diameters since prehistoric times. In Horns and Trumpets of the World, the eminent scholar Jeremy Montagu surveys the vast range in time and type of this instrument that has accompanied everything in human history from the war cry to the formal symphony, from the hunting call to the modern jazz performance. No work on this topic offers as much detail or so many illustrations—over 150, in fact—of this remarkable instrument. Montagu’s examination starts with horns constructed from such unusual materials as seaweed, cane, and bamboo, and continues the journey of exploration through those of shell, wood, ivory, and metal. The chronological scope of Horns and Trumpets of the World is equally vast: it looks at instruments of the Bible and from the Bronze and Iron Ages respectively before diving headlong into those from the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical periods, and, following the Industrial Revolution, those that have appeared in the modern era. Drawing on the many instruments from the author’s own extensive collection, Montagu offers details, including measurements, at levels rarely seen in other surveys of this world of instrumentation. Horns and Trumpet of the World should appeal to not only scholars and collectors, but professional brass players and manufacturers, as well as museums and institutions with a vested interest in our musical heritage.

Our images of the big names and places of the Old West often come from the tales of gunfights and violence that were sensationalized by dime novels and yellow journalism in the 19th century and the myths that came from those stories live on today. But in reality many of these fabled characters of the Wild West were gamblers first and gunfighters second— more invested in poker than in the momentary fury of the shootout. Aces and Eights tells story of the role of poker in the lives of these legends, and offers a portrait of the places where they lived and frequently died. This book offers both the “facts” of these lives and the true tales of the game and the gamblers—and the entertaining “tall tales” that have survived to this day.

Based on the author's fieldwork in Ghana with the Asante and Denkyira ntahera trumpeters, this book draws on interviews, field recordings, oral traditions, written accounts, archaeological evidence, transcriptions and linguistic analyses to situate the Asante trumpet tradition in historical culture. There are seven ivory trumpet ensembles in residence at the Asante Manhyia Palace in Kumase, and ivory trumpets are blown at every Akan court. The Asante trumpets, which are made from elephant tusks, are symbols of Asante strength and have an important role in Asante cosmology. Surrogate speech is performed via lipped tones through a tusk in praise of the Asante royal ancestors and the living Asante king. This book contains transcriptions and analyses of surrogate speech texts and their accompanying ensemble songs. When several ensembles play simultaneously as a representation of power, they make staggered entrances, beginning separate songs in order. This results in a simultaneous performance of separate songs. This phenomenon, which Kaminski has termed 'sound-barrage', is an ancient aesthetic, and is performed to protect the kingdom and the ancestors. It is both spiritual and acoustical. This 'sound barrage' is believed to act in the metaphysical world, dispelling evil spirits from court rituals, ancestor venerations, and funerals, for there is a spirit in the sound.

Critical Praise for Gene Smith On Until the Last Trumpet Sounds "The best recent compact study of the commander of the American Expeditionary Force of World War I." Booklist "A six-star effort . . . captures Pershing better than anyone has before." The Grand Rapids Press On The Shattered Dream "A storyteller of history, Gene Smith is one of the very best in his field." The Washington Post On When the Cheering Stopped "A brilliantly written and dramatically effective work of history . . . Smith is a prodigious researcher, an artful writer." The New York Times On American Gothic "A ripping good tale . . . the story rivets you. You can t put the book down." The New York Times Book Review

From the late 1800s through the first half of the 1900s, pulp magazines--costing a dime and filled with both fiction and nonfiction--were a staple of American life. Though often overlooked by popular culturalists, sports were one of the staples of the pulp scene; such standards as the National Police Gazette and All-Story carried some sports stories, and several publications, such as Sport Story Magazine, were entirely devoted to them. An overview of the pulps is followed by an examination of those devoted to sports: how they came into being, the development of the genre, the popularity of its heroes, and coverage of real-life events. The roles of editors, writers, artists, and publishers are then fully covered. A chapter on Street & Smith, the foremost publisher of sports pulps, follows, while a concluding chapter discusses the reasons for the demise of the pulps in the early 1950s.