BOOKS THREAD

Thanks for the heads up. Based on use of“riveting” I think I’ll check it out (literally from my library)

 

I did a mini review on Dec 27. I have read many business books but nothing like this. I learned years ago that many intelligent people aren’t ‘smart’, meaning devoid of common sense. Fantastic research by Carryou.

 

I picked up Ryan Walsh's Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 at the library after Rolling Stones called it one of the best music books of 2018. At its core it is a book about Van Morrison's time in Boston and how he came to write and ultimately record Astral Weeks. The Morrison stuff is great and this book could have used more of it as well as more of Peter Wolf, who befriended Morrison in those days.

The chapters about the founding of the legendary Boston Tea Party club, the fruitless search for a "Boston Sound" (in those pre-J. Geils and Aerosmith days), the creation of the city's first FM rock station and the circumstances surrounding James Brown's show in Boston in the aftermath of the Martin Luther King assassination are terrific but the book gets bogged down in endless pages devoted to cult leader Mel Lyman and his followers and other assorted drug and counter-culture stuff happening in the city at that time.

 

“Bad Blood” is also great in describing how Carreyrou worked his sources, and the risks those sources took. It’s insane how much pressure a company with a high-powered law firm can do to shut down whistleblowers.

So, 298 pages of pure greatness, but the one-page opinion column as an epilogue left a sour taste in my mouth.

 

There are two new Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young bios (with the same title) on the shelves now and I read them both so you don't have to.

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young: The Wild, Definitive Saga of Rock's Greatest Supergroup by David Browne (whose Grateful Dead book, So Many Roads, is excellent) is easily the more thorough of the two. Features new quotes from Crosby and Nash (Stephen Stills is apparently writing his own book while Neil Young is, well, Neil Young) and many others who were around the group in its various incarnations. Dives really deep on their endless dysfunction, disastrous tours, relationships and various solo efforts, Crosby's drug issues, health problems and incarceration and their seemingly constant need to have Neil Young to agree to another reunion tour so they can make a few bucks. At the end of it you are just tired of all four of them.

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young by Peter Doggett (whose book, You Never Give Me Your Money, is a highly recommended look at the financial aftermath of the Beatles breakup) is more of an overview than a deep dive. Nothing new from any of the principals but it covers all the important moments in their history without getting too deep into any of it.

Both are worth a read, choose one based on your level of interest in the foursome.

 

Downloaded both last week and also the recent Stephen Stills bio. He can play anyone else but nobody does him. I don’t care where RS rates him, he’s in the top 10 of all time.

 

I agree. A really fascinating book.

One of the many things I found interesting is that the Weather-folk really had only a dozen or so hardcore members. And that in the end a lot of them gave up because they - I'll misquote - "didn't want to go around blowing up men's rooms for the rest of their lives."

 

Chris Salewicz' new Jimmy Page book is billed as the "definitive biography" and while that isn't true (that would be No Quarter, the Three Lives of Jimmy Page by Martin Power which I reviewed late last year) it is a worthwhile look at Page and the three phases of his career, young studio whiz and Yardbirds member, Zeppelin boss and then often directionless guy in the years after Zeppelin split. It doesn't skip Page's raging drug use or messy personal life but spends too much time on Page's interest in the occult and doesn't have the commentary from those who played with, worked with and covered Page throughout his career that Power's book did. (Neither book has any new quotes from Page or any of the surviving guys in Zeppelin.)

Both of these books, and Paul Rees's bio of Robert Plant from a few years back, are valuable additions to the Zeppelin library.

 

Did you read Bring it on Home, the bio of Peter Grant?

 

Just finished Presidents at War by Michael Beschloss. This is an excellent history of the way US Presidents during times of war have accreted power to themselves - and by extension to the Executive Branch of govt - from the inactions or the tardy actions of the US Congress.

The book begins with Madison (War of 1812) and proceeds through Polk (Mexican War), Lincoln (of course), McKinley (Spanish-American War), Wilson (WW I), Roosevelt and Truman (WW II), Truman again (Korean War) Johnson/Nixon (Viet Nam). Interestingly, the book barely mentions the actions and the involvements of JFK with regard to the antecedents to the Viet Nam War.

The author says that he did not pay equal attention to the Gulf War or the war in Iraq because he felt that insufficient time had passed to make critical documents available to historians and because there was an insufficient historical perspective from which to view those conflicts.

The book is excellently written; it is a history book AND it is a page-turner. Many US govt figures who are treated VERY kindly in US History courses in high school and college are shown to have feet of clay here. Highly recommended...

 

Really enjoyed this. It would be a good companion book to Kill 'Em and Leave, which is a posthumous look at James Brown's career and how the estate he left to help children in Georgia has been sucked dry by lawyers.

This book looks at his career in relation to a concert he played in Boston the night after MLK was killed and how he, basically, kept peace in the city. It's a lot more than that, obviously, but the narrative all circles back to that show.

Joe Bob says check it out.