Human Conditions: ‘Black Music’ by Amiri Bara...

In the late 1870s, shortly after the publication of Anna Karenina, Tolstoy experienced what might be described today as a midlife crisis. In his short autobiographical book A Confession, finished in 1880, he questioned what meaning there is in life that is not annihilated by the ...  Show more

Mary Shelley signed off her introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein by bidding her ‘hideous progeny go forth and prosper’. In this episode of The Man Behind the Curtain, Tom McCarthy and Thomas Jones look at the machinery that Shelley used to assemble her immortal creatu ...  Show more

In Listening for Africa: Freedom, Modernity, and the Logic of Black Music’s African Origins (Duke University Press, 2017), David García reminds us that how culture is understood and interpreted not only reflects the political and social discourses of the day, but also shapes thos ...  Show more

In Dreams in Double Time: On Race, Freedom, and Bebop (Duke UP, 2023), Jonathan Leal examines how the musical revolution of bebop opened up new futures for racialized and minoritized communities. Blending lyrical nonfiction with transdisciplinary critique and moving beyond standa ...  Show more

New York City might have been the epicenter of the twentieth century American art scene, but Los Angeles was no slouch either, writes Kellie Jones in South of Pico: African American Artists in the 1960s and 1970s(Duke University Press, 2017). Dr. Jones, Professor of Art History a ...  Show more

Nate Chinen's Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century (Vintage, 2019) is an essential guide to 21st century jazz. Named a best book of the year by NPR, GQ, Billboard, JazzTimes and many more, Chinen's book profiles many of the most exciting voices in jazz, from Kamasi Washingto ...  Show more