Full AspenCat Catalog

The summer of 1927 began with one of the signature events of the twentieth century: on May 21, a927, Charles Lindbergh became the first man to cross the Atlantic by plane nonstop. This and much, much more transpired in the epochal summer of 1927, and Bill Bryson captures its outsized personalities, exciting events, and occasional just plain weirdness with his trademark vividness, eye for telling detail, and delicious humor.

A companion book to the groundbreaking PBS and BBC documentary series celebrates the pioneers and artists of American roots music--blues, gospel, folk, Cajun, Appalachian, Hawaiian, and Native American--without which there would be no jazz, rock, country, R & B, or hip hop today. "American Epic, a historic music project ... explores the pivotal recording journeys at the height of the Roaring Twenties, when music scouts armed with cutting-edge portable...

Set in 1960's London, Funny Girl is a lively account of the adventures of the intrepid young Sophie Straw as she navigates her transformation from provincial ingenue to television starlet amid a constellation of delightful characters. Insightful and humorous, Nick Hornby's latest does what he does best: endears us to a cast of characters who are funny if flawed, and forces us to examine ourselves in the process. "--

Life has gon to battle during World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam war and the gulf war. Life 60 years is ahistory of Life and of life

A photographic chronicle of the three decades preceding the dawn of the twentieth century in America, covering the frontier, cycling, education, city building, amusements, and other topics.

"Restoring three-dimensionality to more than fifty of these American sayings, Tippecanoe and Tyler Too turns cliches back into history by telling the life stories of the words that have served as our most powerful battle cries, rallying points, laments, and inspirations." "In individual entries on slogans and catchphrases from the early seventeenth to the late twentieth century, Jan R. Van Meter reveals that each one is a living, malleable entity...

From the time the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, Americans have defied their stodgy rules and hierarchies with pranks, dances, stunts, and wild parties, shaping the national character in profound and lasting ways. In the nation's earlier eras, revelers flouted Puritans, Patriots pranked Redcoats, slaves lampooned masters, and forty-niners bucked the saddles of an increasingly uptight middle class. In the twentieth century, fun-loving Americans...

"The African diaspora - a direct result of the transatlantic slave trade and Western colonialism - has generated a wide array of artistic achievements, from blues and reggae, to the paintings of the pioneering African American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner and video creations of contemporary hip-hop artists. This book concentrates on how these works, often created during times of major social upheaval and transformation, use black culture both as a subject...

Dancing in the Dark shows how our worst economic crisis, as it eroded American individualism and punctured the American dream, produced in the 1930s some of the greatest writing, photography, and mass entertainment ever seen in this country.