Mellencamp
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9781982112141
198211214
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From the Book - First Atria Books hardcover edition.
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Kirkus Book Review
Sturdy biography of the uncompromising rocker, the Midwest's answer to Bruce Springsteen. You might be forgiven for thinking, if you'd seen him in about 1970, that John Mellencamp (b. 1951) was going to wind up dead or in prison. A kid from a cash-strapped family in small-town Indiana, he thought with his fists and fought with a constantly active mouth. Things changed when he managed to avoid the Vietnam draft and went to college, not so much to attend class as to play music day and night. British rock journalist Rees, the previous biographer of Robert Plant and former editor of both Q and Kerrang!magazines, turns five-plus years of diligent research into a snappy, well-considered biography that shows Mellencamp being swamped by a long wave of bad business decisions at first, including being saddled with a silly stage name. "There were a lot of guys trying to do the same thing I was, right around the same time," Mellencamp told the author. "Having my name changed to Johnny Cougar was just another hurdle." Indeed, it's a mark of his growing power as a songwriter, recording artist, and live performer that he was able to break free of a name he hated to record under his own name. Rees makes clear that Mellencamp is a stern taskmaster who has never been afraid of criticizing or firing band mates--who, he makes clear, are just employees. Despite his drive and the fire of songs like "Rain on the Scarecrow" and "Pink Houses," Mellencamp has no illusions about his history. "Here's what they're going to remember," he says. "There was a band called The Beatles, a band called The Rolling Stones, and this guy called Bob Dylan. That's it." Yet Rees makes it clear that Mellencamp deserves to be remembered, as well, both for his music and his determination to do his own thing. A fine, lively work of rock journalism that should kindle renewed interest in its subject's body of work. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Reviews
In The Gambler Wife, Russian literature scholar Kaufman unfolds the story of stubborn young stenographer Anna Snitkina, who discovered a sick and disillusioned man when she went to work for Fyodor Dostoyevsky and acted to heal him, becoming his wife and manager (pubbing August 31). To many, Mills will be Forever Young, having launched her career as a preteen and won the Academy Juvenile Award for Disney's Pollyanna, but here she unfolds an active artistic life. Biographer of McCartney, Springsteen, and Madonna, Rees now tackles Mellencamp, whom Billboard dubbed "arguably the most important roots rocker of his generation." A John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford, celebrated cultural critic Smith should Shine Bright in her study showing Black women there at the creation of American pop. Short-listed for the Wolfson History Prize, Sturgis's Oscar Wilde: A Life draws on newly discovered letters, documents, first-draft notebooks, and the full transcript of the libel trial to give us a bigger picture of bigger-than-life Wilde. The John L. Loeb Professor of Folklore and Mythology and Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard, Tartar presents The Heroine with 1,001 Faces as counterbalance to Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, exploring women characters from Cassandra to Lisbeth Salander while shifting the emphasis for bloody glory-seeking to the deep-seated empathy and connection we seek today. When Verdelle published The Good Negress in 1995, she won early praise from Toni Morrison, which led to friendship even as Verdelle's next novel—a Western featuring Black characters—languished. All detailed, along with Verdelle's early struggles to write, in Miss Chloe (45,000-copy first printing).
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