Description
Book SynopsisThe United States not only plays a large role in shaping international entertainment and tastes, it is also a consumer of foreign intellectual and artistic influences. This title reveals how the American artists, novelists, composers, jazz musicians, and filmmakers who were part of the Modernist movement were greatly influenced by outside ideas.
Trade Review“[T]here is much to enjoy here . . . a rousing jaunt through a period of remarkable upheavals in entertainment and the arts.”—The Wall Street Journal
* The Wall Street Journal *
“Debates over high and low art, and the avant-garde vs. popular culture, rage throughout this absorbing volume.”—Publishers Weekly
* Publishers Weekly *
"Richard Pells's book leaps, lunges, gallops, and, once in a while, pirouettes its way toward something very close toa unified field theory of twentieth-century American culture."—Gene Seymour,
Bookforum -- Gene Seymour * Bookforum *
"Pells writes with grace and accessibility about big ideas, and he’s a master of synthesizing disparate materials and figures, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Miles Davis to Robert Altman. This is among the most lively multidisciplinary arts studies I’ve ever read, especially in its focus on cross-pollination between the U.S. and other parts of the world." –Chris Vognar,
Dallas Morning News Arts Blog -- Chris Vognar * Dallas Morning News *
“Pells serves as an engagingly interesting and learned guide . . . Pells’ reading of American art, music, and movies is at its freshest and is most destabilizing of the easy generalities that we wrap around the products of American culture.” —Daniel T. Rodgers,
Reviews in American History -- Daniel T. Rodgers * Reviews in American History *
“[Pells’] book crackles with intellectual energy and showcases a formidable body of knowledge that leaps across all kinds of barriers. . . . Pells tackles big ideas in prose clear and accessible enough to make you forget you’re reading an academic text. He can talk John Wayne and Igor Stravinsky. You could say he’s a pretty modern guy.” —Chris Vognar,
Dallas Morning News -- Chris Vognar * Dallas Morning News *
