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Listening In: The Secret White House Recordings of John F. Kennedy

by Caroline Kennedy Ted Widmer

In July 1962, in an effort to preserve an accurate record of Presidential decision-making in a highly charged atmosphere of conflicting viewpoints, strategies and tactics, John F. Kennedy installed hidden recording systems in the Oval Office and in the Cabinet Room. The result is a priceless historical archive comprising some 265 hours of taped material. JFK was elected president when Civil Rights tensions were near the boiling point, and Americans feared a nuclear war. Confronted with complex dilemmas necessitating swift and unprecedented action, President Kennedy engaged in intense discussion and debate with his cabinet members and other advisors. Now, in conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of the Kennedy presidency, the John F. Kennedy Library and historian Ted Widmer have carefully selected the most compelling and important of these remarkable recordings for release, fully restored and re-mastered onto two 75-minute CDs for the first time. Listening In represents a uniquely unscripted, insider account of a president and his cabinet grappling with the day-to-day business of the White House and guiding the nation through a hazardous era of uncertainty.Accompanied by extensively annotated transcripts of the recordings, and with a foreword by Caroline Kennedy, Listening In delivers the story behind the story in the unguarded words and voices of the decision-makers themselves. Listening In covers watershed events, including the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Space Race, Vietnam, and the arms race, and offers fascinating glimpses into the intellectual methodology of a circumspect president and his brilliant, eclectic brain trust. Just as the unique vision of President John F. Kennedy continues to resonate half a century after his stirring speeches and bold policy decisions, the documentary candor of Listening In imparts a vivid, breathtaking immediacy that will significantly expand our understanding of his time in office.

Listening In: The Secret White House Recordings of John F. Kennedy

by Ted Widmer

In July 1962, in an effort to preserve an accurate record of Presidential decision-making in a highly charged atmosphere of conflicting viewpoints, strategies and tactics, John F. Kennedy installed hidden recording systems in the Oval Office and in the Cabinet Room. The result is a priceless historical archive comprising some 265 hours of taped material. JFK was elected president when Civil Rights tensions were near the boiling point, and Americans feared a nuclear war. Confronted with complex dilemmas necessitating swift and unprecedented action, President Kennedy engaged in intense discussion and debate with his cabinet members and other advisors. Now, in conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of the Kennedy presidency, the John F. Kennedy Library and historian Ted Widmer have carefully selected the most compelling and important of these remarkable recordings for release, fully restored and re-mastered onto two 75-minute CDs for the first time. Listening In represents a uniquely unscripted, insider account of a president and his cabinet grappling with the day-to-day business of the White House and guiding the nation through a hazardous era of uncertainty. Accompanied by extensively annotated transcripts of the recordings, and with a foreword by Caroline Kennedy, Listening In delivers the story behind the story in the unguarded words and voices of the decision-makers themselves. Listening In covers watershed events, including the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Space Race, Vietnam, and the arms race, and offers fascinating glimpses into the intellectual methodology of a circumspect president and his brilliant, eclectic brain trust. Just as the unique vision of President John F. Kennedy continues to resonate half a century after his stirring speeches and bold policy decisions, the documentary candor of Listening In imparts a vivid, breathtaking immediacy that will significantly expand our understanding of his time in office.

Listening Valley

by D. E. Stevenson

Nothing will stop Tonia from finding a home of her ownTonia has lived all her life in the quiet Scottish countryside and can't imagine herself anywhere else. But when her beloved older sister gets married and moves away, Tonia begins to wonder if there aren't bigger things on the horizon for her too.The advent of World War II brings Tonia briefly to the heart of London, where the roar of fighter planes echoes through the night and bombings are a constant threat--but just as she's settling into her new life, a heart-breaking tragedy sends her back home to Scotland. With new friends by her side, Tonia thinks she may have finally found the place where she is supposed to be. But the war interferes again with her plans, and she fears that the person she loves most may be lost to her forever.Readers Love D.E. Stevenson's Books:"This heartwarming novel is the literary equivalent of a comforting cup of cocoa on a cozy winter's evening--I can't recommend it highly enough."

Listening and Knowledge in Reformation Europe: Hearing, Speaking and Remembering in Calvin’s Geneva

by Anna Kvicalova

This book investigates a host of primary sources documenting the Calvinist Reformation in Geneva, exploring the history and epistemology of religious listening at the crossroads of sensory anthropology and religion, knowledge, and media. It reconstructs the social, religious, and material relations at the heart of the Genevan Reformation by examining various facets of the city’s auditory culture which was marked by a gradual fashioning of new techniques of listening, speaking, and remembering. Anna Kvicalova analyzes the performativity of sensory perception in the framework of Calvinist religious epistemology, and approaches hearing and acoustics both as tools through which the Calvinist religious identity was constructed, and as objects of knowledge and rudimentary investigation. The heightened interest in the auditory dimension of communication observed in Geneva is studied against the backdrop of contemporary knowledge about sound and hearing in a wider European context.

Listening and Longing: Music Lovers in the Age of Barnum (Music Culture)

by Daniel Cavicchi

Listening and Longing explores the emergence of music listening in the United States, from its early stages in the antebellum era, when entrepreneurs first packaged and sold the experience of hearing musical performance, to the Gilded Age, when genteel critics began to successfully redefine the cultural value of listening to music. In a series of interconnected stories, American studies scholar Daniel Cavicchi focuses on the impact of industrialization, urbanization, and commercialization in shaping practices of music audiences in America. Grounding our contemporary culture of listening in its seminal historical moment--before the iPod, stereo system, or phonograph--Cavicchi offers a fresh understanding of the role of listening in the history of music.

Listening for Africa: Freedom, Modernity, and the Logic of Black Music's African Origins

by David F. García

In Listening for Africa David F. Garcia explores how a diverse group of musicians, dancers, academics, and activists engaged with the idea of black music and dance’s African origins between the 1930s and 1950s. Garcia examines the work of figures ranging from Melville J. Herskovits, Katherine Dunham, and Asadata Dafora to Duke Ellington, Dámaso Pérez Prado, and others who believed that linking black music and dance with Africa and nature would help realize modernity’s promises of freedom in the face of fascism and racism in Europe and the Americas, colonialism in Africa, and the nuclear threat at the start of the Cold War. In analyzing their work, Garcia traces how such attempts to link black music and dance to Africa unintentionally reinforced the binary relationships between the West and Africa, white and black, the modern and the primitive, science and magic, and rural and urban. It was, Garcia demonstrates, modernity’s determinations of unraced, heteronormative, and productive bodies, and of scientific truth that helped defer the realization of individual and political freedom in the world.

Listening for America: Inside The Great American Songbook From Gershwin To Sondheim

by Rob Kapilow

“Not since the late Leonard Bernstein has classical music had a combination salesman-teacher as irresistible as Kapilow.” —Kansas City Star Few people in recent memory have dedicated themselves as devotedly to the story of twentieth- century American music as Rob Kapilow, the composer, conductor, and host of the hit NPR music radio program, What Makes It Great? Now, in Listening for America, he turns his keen ear to the Great American Songbook, bringing many of our favorite classics to life through the songs and stories of eight of the twentieth century’s most treasured American composers—Kern, Porter, Gershwin, Arlen, Berlin, Rodgers, Bernstein, and Sondheim. Hardly confi ning himself to celebrating what makes these catchy melodies so unforgettable, Kapilow delves deeply into how issues of race, immigration, sexuality, and appropriation intertwine in masterpieces like Show Boat and West Side Story. A book not just about musical theater but about America itself, Listening for America is equally for the devotee, the singer, the music student, or for anyone intrigued by how popular music has shaped the larger culture, and promises to be the ideal gift book for years to come.

Listening for God in Torah and Creation: A weekly encounter with conscience and soul

by Jonathan Wittenberg

'The essence of Jewish life is not the bland performance of the Torah's commandments, but rather love of Torah and the way of life to which it is the guide.'Tap into the wisdom of one the world's ancient religions by meditating on Rabbi Wittenberg's engaging, contemporary, spiritual, social and ethical insights to the Torah. Rooted in decades of devoted immersion in Jewish learning, humanist literature, concern for people at all ages and stages of life, environmental activism and a love of nature, Rabbi Wittenberg offers wisdom relevant to Jews, Christians and spiritual seekers of all and no faiths.Over the hundred and more passages, key issues considered include: Compassion and kindness; Creation and wonder; Emotional struggles; Environment and our relationship to nature; Ethical challenges; Illness and suffering; Identity and community; Justice and Social Justice; Refugees and strangers; Remorse and repentance; Responsibility; Searching for meaning; Seeking God.

Listening for Lions

by Gloria Whelan

Historical fiction with a wicked twist. Listening for Lions is a breathtaking story of tragedy, deception, and triumph against all odds. National Book Award-winning author Gloria Whelan sets this richly historical coming-of-age adventure in British East Africa in the year 1918. This irresistible novel entangles an orphaned girl in a deceit-filled plot. Young Rachel Sheridan is made to leave her beloved Africa for England, where she must pose as the deceased daughter of a nefarious couple in an effort to gain them an enormous inheritance. Her irrepressible spirit and extraordinary wit turn her from victim to heroine in a surprising and empowering tale of a remarkable young woman.

Listening for Lucca

by Suzanne Lafleur

"I'm obsessed with abandoned things." Siena's obsession began a year and a half ago, around the time her two-year-old brother Lucca stopped talking. Now Mom and Dad are moving the family from Brooklyn to Maine hoping that it will mean a whole new start for Lucca and Siena. She soon realizes that their wonderful old house on the beach holds secrets. When Siena writes in her diary with an old pen she found in her closet, the pen writes its own story, of Sarah and Joshua, a brother and sister who lived in the same house during World War II. As the two stories unfold, amazing parallels begin to appear, and Siena senses that Sarah and Joshua's story might contain the key to unlocking Lucca's voice.

Listening in Detail: Performances of Cuban Music

by Vazquez Alexandra T.

Listening in Detail is an original and impassioned take on the intellectual and sensory bounty of Cuban music as it circulates between the island, the United States, and other locations. It is also a powerful critique of efforts to define "Cuban music" for ethnographic examination or market consumption. Contending that the music is not a knowable entity but a spectrum of dynamic practices that elude definition, Alexandra T. Vazquez models a new way of writing about music and the meanings assigned to it. "Listening in detail" is a method invested in opening up, rather than pinning down, experiences of Cuban music. Critiques of imperialism, nationalism, race, and gender emerge in fragments and moments, and in gestures and sounds through Vazquez's engagement with Alfredo Rodríguez's album Cuba Linda (1996), the seventy-year career of the vocalist Graciela Pérez, the signature grunt of the "Mambo King" Dámaso Pérez Prado, Cuban music documentaries of the 1960s, and late-twentieth-century concert ephemera.

Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (Studies on the History of Society and Culture #21)

by James H. Johnson

Beginning with the simple question, "Why did audiences grow silent?" Listening in Paris gives a spectator's-eye view of opera and concert life from the Old Regime to the Romantic era, describing the transformation in musical experience from social event to profound aesthetic encounter. James H. Johnson recreates the experience of audiences during these rich decades with brio and wit. Woven into the narrative is an analysis of the political, musical, and aesthetic factors that produced more engaged listening. Johnson shows the gradual pacification of audiences from loud and unruly listeners to the attentive public we know today.Drawing from a wide range of sources—novels, memoirs, police files, personal correspondence, newspaper reviews, architectural plans, and the like—Johnson brings the performances to life: the hubbub of eighteenth-century opera, the exuberance of Revolutionary audiences, Napoleon's musical authoritarianism, the bourgeoisie's polite consideration. He singles out the music of Gluck, Haydn, Rossini, and Beethoven as especially important in forging new ways of hearing. This book's theoretical edge will appeal to cultural and intellectual historians in many fields and periods.

Listening is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Lives from the StoryCorps Project

by Dave Isay

Selection of excerpts from oral history interviews from the StoryCorps Project which are also broadcast on NPR's "Morning Edition" every Friday.

Listening to Bob Dylan (Music in American Life)

by Larry Starr

Venerated for his lyrics, Bob Dylan in fact is a songwriting musician with a unique mastery of merging his words with music and performance. Larry Starr cuts through pretention and myth to provide a refreshingly holistic appreciation of Dylan's music. Ranging from celebrated classics to less familiar compositions, Starr invites readers to reinvigorate their listening experiences by sharing his own—sometimes approaching a song from a fresh perspective, sometimes reeling in surprise at discoveries found in well-known favorites. Starr breaks down often-overlooked aspects of the works, from Dylan's many vocal styles to his evocative harmonica playing to his choices as a composer. The result is a guide that allows listeners to follow their own passionate love of music into hearing these songs—and personal favorites—in new ways. Reader-friendly and revealing, Listening to Bob Dylan encourages hardcore fans and Dylan-curious seekers alike to rediscover the music legend.

Listening to Britain: Home Intelligence Reports on Britain's Finest Hour, May-September 1940

by Paul Addison Jeremy A Crang

From May to September 1940, a period that saw some of the most dramatic events in British history - including the evacuation of Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain and the opening stages of the Blitz - the Ministry of Information eavesdropped on the conversations of ordinary people in all parts of the United Kingdom and compiled secret daily reports on the state of popular morale.

Listening to China: Sound and the Sino-Western Encounter, 1770-1839 (New Material Histories of Music)

by Thomas Irvine

From bell ringing to fireworks, gongs to cannon salutes, a dazzling variety of sounds and soundscapes marked the China encountered by the West around 1800. These sounds were gathered by diplomats, trade officials, missionaries, and other travelers and transmitted back to Europe, where they were reconstructed in the imaginations of writers, philosophers, and music historians such as Jean-Philippe Rameau, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, and Charles Burney. Thomas Irvine gathers these stories in Listening to China, exploring how the sonic encounter with China shaped perceptions of Europe’s own musical development. Through these stories, Irvine not only investigates how the Sino-Western encounter sounded, but also traces the West’s shifting response to China. As the trading relationships between China and the West broke down, travelers and music theorists abandoned the vision of shared musical approaches, focusing instead on China’s noisiness and sonic disorder and finding less to like in its music. At the same time, Irvine reconsiders the idea of a specifically Western music history, revealing that it was comparison with China, the great “other,” that helped this idea emerge. Ultimately, Irvine draws attention to the ways Western ears were implicated in the colonial and imperial project in China, as well as to China’s importance to the construction of musical knowledge during and after the European Enlightenment. Timely and original, Listening to China is a must-read for music scholars and historians of China alike.

Listening to China: Sound and the Sino-Western Encounter, 1770-1839 (New Material Histories of Music)

by Thomas Irvine

From bell ringing to fireworks, gongs to cannon salutes, a dazzling variety of sounds and soundscapes marked the China encountered by the West around 1800. These sounds were gathered by diplomats, trade officials, missionaries, and other travelers and transmitted back to Europe, where they were reconstructed in the imaginations of writers, philosophers, and music historians such as Jean-Philippe Rameau, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, and Charles Burney. Thomas Irvine gathers these stories in Listening to China, exploring how the sonic encounter with China shaped perceptions of Europe’s own musical development. Through these stories, Irvine not only investigates how the Sino-Western encounter sounded, but also traces the West’s shifting response to China. As the trading relationships between China and the West broke down, travelers and music theorists abandoned the vision of shared musical approaches, focusing instead on China’s noisiness and sonic disorder and finding less to like in its music. At the same time, Irvine reconsiders the idea of a specifically Western music history, revealing that it was comparison with China, the great “other,” that helped this idea emerge. Ultimately, Irvine draws attention to the ways Western ears were implicated in the colonial and imperial project in China, as well as to China’s importance to the construction of musical knowledge during and after the European Enlightenment. Timely and original, Listening to China is a must-read for music scholars and historians of China alike.

Listening to Rap: An Introduction

by Michael Berry

<p>Over the past four decades, rap and hip hop culture have taken a central place in popular music both in the United States and around the world. Listening to Rap: An Introduction enables students to understand the historical context, cultural impact, and unique musical characteristics of this essential genre. Each chapter explores a key topic in the study of rap music from the 1970s to today, covering themes such as race, gender, commercialization, politics, and authenticity. Synthesizing the approaches of scholars from a variety of disciplines—including music, cultural studies, African-American studies, gender studies, literary criticism, and philosophy—Listening to Rap tracks the evolution of rap and hip hop while illustrating its vast cultural significance. <p>The text features more than 60 detailed listening guides that analyze the musical elements of songs by a wide array of artists, from Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash to Nicki Minaj, Jay-Z, Kanye West, and more. A companion website showcases playlists of the music discussed in each chapter. Rooted in the understanding that cultural context, music, and lyrics combine to shape rap’s meaning, the text assumes no prior knowledge. For students of all backgrounds, Listening to Rap offers a clear and accessible introduction to this vital and influential music.</p>

Listening to Reason: Culture, Subjectivity, and Nineteenth-Century Music

by Michael P. Steinberg

This pathbreaking work reveals the pivotal role of music--musical works and musical culture--in debates about society, self, and culture that forged European modernity through the "long nineteenth century." Michael Steinberg argues that, from the late 1700s to the early 1900s, music not only reflected but also embodied modern subjectivity as it increasingly engaged and criticized old regimes of power, belief, and representation. His purview ranges from Mozart to Mahler, and from the sacred to the secular, including opera as well as symphonic and solo instrumental music. Defining subjectivity as the experience rather than the position of the "I," Steinberg argues that music's embodiment of subjectivity involved its apparent capacity to "listen" to itself, its past, its desires. Nineteenth-century music, in particular music from a north German Protestant sphere, inspired introspection in a way that the music and art of previous periods, notably the Catholic baroque with its emphasis on the visual, did not. The book analyzes musical subjectivity initially from Mozart through Mendelssohn, then seeks it, in its central chapter, in those aspects of Wagner that contradict his own ideological imperialism, before finally uncovering its survival in the post-Wagnerian recovery from musical and other ideologies. Engagingly written yet theoretically sophisticated, Listening to Reason represents a startlingly original corrective to cultural history's long-standing inhibition to engage with music while presenting a powerful alternative vision of the modern.Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

Listening to Type: Making Language Visible

by Alex W. White

With this visually stunning primer, designers will develop the skills and vision to produce truly innovative, eye-catching type design. All the basics of type design are covered, and in-depth information is provided on more advanced topics such as the differences between type applications, how typography creates identity, and what best inspires readers. Chapters cover:The language of typeSpace and typeTypographic unityWhat makes readers respondType and identityEvolving type treatmentsReadability and legibilityA timeline of the evolution of writing and typographyDesigner Alex W. White packs the pages with fifteen hundred images-modern and ancient, specially created and found-that illustrate typographic concepts and continue to yield more complexity and connectivity with each viewing. Listening to Type proves that type is much more than groups of letterforms on a page; it is a language with the ability to convey meaning and evoke emotions beyond the spoken words it symbolizes.Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.

Listening to Workers: Oral Histories of Metro Detroit Autoworkers in the 1950s (Working Class in American History)

by Daniel J. Clark

Historians and readers alike often overlook the everyday experiences of workers. Drawing on years of interviews and archival research, Daniel J. Clark presents the rich, interesting, and sometimes confounding lives of men and women who worked in Detroit-area automotive plants in the 1950s. In their own words, the interviewees frankly discuss personal matters like divorce and poverty alongside recollections of childhood and first jobs, marriage and working women, church and hobbies, and support systems and workplace dangers. Their frequent struggles with unstable jobs and economic insecurity upend notions of the 1950s as a golden age of prosperity while stories of domestic violence and infidelity open a door to intimate aspects of their lives. Taken together, the narratives offer seldom-seen accounts of autoworkers as complex and multidimensional human beings. Compelling and surprising, Listening to Workers foregoes the union-focused strain of labor history to provide ground-level snapshots of a blue-collar world.

Listening to the Body

by Tracey E. Fern

Doctors have been listening to the sounds of the human body for more than two thousand years, but did not begin associating those noises with health until the mid-1700s. Doctor Rene Laennec remembered the importance of listening when treating his patients, leading him to invent the stethoscope, which doctors still use today.

Listening to the Page: Adventures in Reading and Writing

by Alan Cheuse

When he sold his first short story to The New Yorker in 1979, Alan Cheuse was hardly new to the literary world. He had studied at Rutgers under John Ciardi, worked at the Breadloaf Writing Workshops with Robert Frost and Ralph Ellison, written hundreds of reviews for Kirkus Reviews, and taught alongside John Gardner and Bernard Malamud at Bennington College for nearly a decade. Soon after the New Yorker story appeared, Cheuse wrote a freelance magazine piece about a new, publicly funded broadcast network called National Public Radio, and a relationship of reviewer and radio was born. In Listening to the Page, Alan Cheuse takes a look back at some of the thousands of books he has read, reviewed, and loved, offering retrospective pieces on modern American literary figures such as Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Bernard Malamud, and John Steinbeck, as well as contemporary writers like Elizabeth Tallent and Vassily Aksyonov. Other essays explore landscape in All the Pretty Horses, the career of James Agee, Mario Vargas Llosa and naturalism, and the life and work of Robert Penn Warren.

Listening to the Philosophers: Notes on Notes

by Raffaella Cribiore

Listening to the Philosophers offers the first comprehensive look into how philosophy was taught in antiquity through a stimulating study of lectures by ancient philosophers that were recorded by their students. Raffaella Cribiore shows how the study of notes—whether Philodemus of Gadara's notes of Zeno's lectures in the first century BCE, or Arrian recording the Discourses of Epictetus in the second century CE, or the students of Didymus the Blind in the fourth century and Olympiodorus in the sixth century—can enable us to understand the methods and practices of what was an orally conducted education. By considering the pedagogical and mnemonic role of notetaking in ancient education, Listening to the Philosophers demonstrates how in antiquity the written and the spoken worlds were intimately intertwined.

Listening to the Voices of the Dead: The 3-11 Tohoku Disaster Speaks (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies #103)

by Jun'ichi Isomae

Listening to the Voices of the Dead is an account of the author’s search for the disquieted voices of the dead in the wake of the March 11, 2011, Tōhoku Disaster and his attempt to translate those voices for the living. Isomae Jun’ichi considers the disaster a challenge for outside observers to overcome, especially for practitioners of religion and religious studies. He chronicles the care and devotion for the dead shown by ordinary people, people displaced from their homes and loved ones. Drawing upon religious studies, Japanese history, postcolonial studies, and his own experiences during the disaster, Isomae uncovers historical symptoms brought to the surface by the traumas of disaster. Only by listening to the disquieted voices of the dead, translating them, and responding to them can we regain our true selves as well as offer peace to the spirits of the victims. While Listening to the Voices of the Dead focuses on a specific event in Japanese history and memory, it captures a broadening critique at the heart of many movements responding to how increasing globalization impacts our sense of place and community.

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