Author: Charles Keil
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022622340X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Book Description
Charles Keil examines the expressive role of blues bands and performers and stresses the intense interaction between performer and audience. Profiling bluesmen Bobby Bland and B. B. King, Keil argues that they are symbols for the black community, embodying important attitudes and roles—success, strong egos, and close ties to the community. While writing Urban Blues in the mid-1960s, Keil optimistically saw this cultural expression as contributing to the rising tide of raised political consciousness in Afro-America. His new Afterword examines black music in the context of capitalism and black culture in the context of worldwide trends toward diversification. "Enlightening. . . . [Keil] has given a provocative indication of the role of the blues singer as a focal point of ghetto community expression."—John S. Wilson, New York Times Book Review"A terribly valuable book and a powerful one. . . . Keil is an original thinker and . . . has offered us a major breakthrough."—Studs Terkel, Chicago Tribune "[Urban Blues] expresses authentic concern for people who are coming to realize that their past was . . . the source of meaningful cultural values."—Atlantic "An achievement of the first magnitude. . . . He opens our eyes and introduces a world of amazingly complex musical happening."—Robert Farris Thompson, Ethnomusicology "[Keil's] vigorous, aggressive scholarship, lucid style and sparkling analysis stimulate the challenge. Valuable insights come from treating urban blues as artistic communication."—James A. Bonar, Boston Herald
Urban Blues
Author: Charles Keil
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022622340X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Book Description
Charles Keil examines the expressive role of blues bands and performers and stresses the intense interaction between performer and audience. Profiling bluesmen Bobby Bland and B. B. King, Keil argues that they are symbols for the black community, embodying important attitudes and roles—success, strong egos, and close ties to the community. While writing Urban Blues in the mid-1960s, Keil optimistically saw this cultural expression as contributing to the rising tide of raised political consciousness in Afro-America. His new Afterword examines black music in the context of capitalism and black culture in the context of worldwide trends toward diversification. "Enlightening. . . . [Keil] has given a provocative indication of the role of the blues singer as a focal point of ghetto community expression."—John S. Wilson, New York Times Book Review"A terribly valuable book and a powerful one. . . . Keil is an original thinker and . . . has offered us a major breakthrough."—Studs Terkel, Chicago Tribune "[Urban Blues] expresses authentic concern for people who are coming to realize that their past was . . . the source of meaningful cultural values."—Atlantic "An achievement of the first magnitude. . . . He opens our eyes and introduces a world of amazingly complex musical happening."—Robert Farris Thompson, Ethnomusicology "[Keil's] vigorous, aggressive scholarship, lucid style and sparkling analysis stimulate the challenge. Valuable insights come from treating urban blues as artistic communication."—James A. Bonar, Boston Herald
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022622340X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Book Description
Charles Keil examines the expressive role of blues bands and performers and stresses the intense interaction between performer and audience. Profiling bluesmen Bobby Bland and B. B. King, Keil argues that they are symbols for the black community, embodying important attitudes and roles—success, strong egos, and close ties to the community. While writing Urban Blues in the mid-1960s, Keil optimistically saw this cultural expression as contributing to the rising tide of raised political consciousness in Afro-America. His new Afterword examines black music in the context of capitalism and black culture in the context of worldwide trends toward diversification. "Enlightening. . . . [Keil] has given a provocative indication of the role of the blues singer as a focal point of ghetto community expression."—John S. Wilson, New York Times Book Review"A terribly valuable book and a powerful one. . . . Keil is an original thinker and . . . has offered us a major breakthrough."—Studs Terkel, Chicago Tribune "[Urban Blues] expresses authentic concern for people who are coming to realize that their past was . . . the source of meaningful cultural values."—Atlantic "An achievement of the first magnitude. . . . He opens our eyes and introduces a world of amazingly complex musical happening."—Robert Farris Thompson, Ethnomusicology "[Keil's] vigorous, aggressive scholarship, lucid style and sparkling analysis stimulate the challenge. Valuable insights come from treating urban blues as artistic communication."—James A. Bonar, Boston Herald
Urban Blues
Author: Charles Keil
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226429601
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 275
Book Description
"Keil's classic account of blues and its artists is both a guide to the development of the music and a powerful study of the blues as an expressive form in and for African American life." -- Amazon.com.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226429601
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 275
Book Description
"Keil's classic account of blues and its artists is both a guide to the development of the music and a powerful study of the blues as an expressive form in and for African American life." -- Amazon.com.
Blue Chicago
Author: David Grazian
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226305899
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
The club is run-down and dimly lit. Onstage, a black singer croons and weeps of heartbreak, fighting back the tears. Wisps of smoke curl through the beam of a single spotlight illuminating the performer. For any music lover, that image captures the essence of an authentic experience of the blues. In Blue Chicago, David Grazian takes us inside the world of contemporary urban blues clubs to uncover how such images are manufactured and sold to music fans and audiences. Drawing on countless nights in dozens of blues clubs throughout Chicago, Grazian shows how this quest for authenticity has transformed the very shape of the blues experience. He explores the ways in which professional and amateur musicians, club owners, and city boosters define authenticity and dish it out to tourists and bar regulars. He also tracks the changing relations between race and the blues over the past several decades, including the increased frustrations of black musicians forced to slog through the same set of overplayed blues standards for mainly white audiences night after night. In the end, Grazian finds that authenticity lies in the eye of the beholder: a nocturnal fantasy to some, an essential way of life to others, and a frustrating burden to the rest. From B.L.U.E.S. and the Checkerboard Lounge to the Chicago Blues Festival itself, Grazian's gritty and often sobering tour in Blue Chicago shows us not what the blues is all about, but why we care so much about that question.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226305899
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
The club is run-down and dimly lit. Onstage, a black singer croons and weeps of heartbreak, fighting back the tears. Wisps of smoke curl through the beam of a single spotlight illuminating the performer. For any music lover, that image captures the essence of an authentic experience of the blues. In Blue Chicago, David Grazian takes us inside the world of contemporary urban blues clubs to uncover how such images are manufactured and sold to music fans and audiences. Drawing on countless nights in dozens of blues clubs throughout Chicago, Grazian shows how this quest for authenticity has transformed the very shape of the blues experience. He explores the ways in which professional and amateur musicians, club owners, and city boosters define authenticity and dish it out to tourists and bar regulars. He also tracks the changing relations between race and the blues over the past several decades, including the increased frustrations of black musicians forced to slog through the same set of overplayed blues standards for mainly white audiences night after night. In the end, Grazian finds that authenticity lies in the eye of the beholder: a nocturnal fantasy to some, an essential way of life to others, and a frustrating burden to the rest. From B.L.U.E.S. and the Checkerboard Lounge to the Chicago Blues Festival itself, Grazian's gritty and often sobering tour in Blue Chicago shows us not what the blues is all about, but why we care so much about that question.
The rise and downfall of Urban Blues
Author: Lars Nemeth
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3638466302
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 23
Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg (Anglistik), course: The Afro - American Blues, language: English, abstract: The Urban Blues is a form of blues music that developed in the big cities in the U.S.. The one city that dominated this development is Chicago. That is why, often the Chicago Blues is meant when talking about Urban Blues. There is probably no other blues style with such a high quality of recognition considering form, feeling and sound like the Chicago Blues. It is based on the rough and direct Delta Blues which came in contact with urban life. Besides, Urban Blues is the first blues style that reached a mass audience. Not just in the bigger cities of the U.S. but also worldwide. One of the most popular musicians of those days is a man called Muddy Waters. He helped to transform a style and technique which guided bluesmusic into a new dimension. He adopted the rural delta blues sound and combined with the feeling of the new living conditions of the Afro Americans. But the urban blues became more popular, left the black quarters and ghettos and was absorbed by the mainstream very soon. Urban blues, released from the subcultural status, a white mass audience and economy started to control the buisness. In the mid fifties the blues hybrid Rock`n Roll took over public attention and Blues and Rock `n Roll were delivered from the Afro American identity. At the end of this development there was a huge lack of authenticity for ‘black’ audience although it once was the Afro-American culture through which they expressed themselves. Consequently most parts of the afro american audience disappeared and started searching for a new musical home. I will try to work out the development from the Urban Blues as an Afro-American identification and its rise until the downfall and alienation for the ‘black’ audience. I will proof this development by the example of the live and career of Muddy Waters and his record company Chess. His roots in the Mississippi Delta Blues, his reputation as one of the heads in Urban Chicago Blues and how he lost his native base and audience. Why did the Afro-Americans turn away from the blues? Why did they leave their cultural roots and where did they arrive, where did the Afro-American culture find their new home? First of all I will concentrate on the demographic, social and cultural changes the Afro American population caused to move in the big cities and how their life and living conditions changed. There were three social changes taking place in the first half of the twentieth century that led to urban blues.
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3638466302
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 23
Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg (Anglistik), course: The Afro - American Blues, language: English, abstract: The Urban Blues is a form of blues music that developed in the big cities in the U.S.. The one city that dominated this development is Chicago. That is why, often the Chicago Blues is meant when talking about Urban Blues. There is probably no other blues style with such a high quality of recognition considering form, feeling and sound like the Chicago Blues. It is based on the rough and direct Delta Blues which came in contact with urban life. Besides, Urban Blues is the first blues style that reached a mass audience. Not just in the bigger cities of the U.S. but also worldwide. One of the most popular musicians of those days is a man called Muddy Waters. He helped to transform a style and technique which guided bluesmusic into a new dimension. He adopted the rural delta blues sound and combined with the feeling of the new living conditions of the Afro Americans. But the urban blues became more popular, left the black quarters and ghettos and was absorbed by the mainstream very soon. Urban blues, released from the subcultural status, a white mass audience and economy started to control the buisness. In the mid fifties the blues hybrid Rock`n Roll took over public attention and Blues and Rock `n Roll were delivered from the Afro American identity. At the end of this development there was a huge lack of authenticity for ‘black’ audience although it once was the Afro-American culture through which they expressed themselves. Consequently most parts of the afro american audience disappeared and started searching for a new musical home. I will try to work out the development from the Urban Blues as an Afro-American identification and its rise until the downfall and alienation for the ‘black’ audience. I will proof this development by the example of the live and career of Muddy Waters and his record company Chess. His roots in the Mississippi Delta Blues, his reputation as one of the heads in Urban Chicago Blues and how he lost his native base and audience. Why did the Afro-Americans turn away from the blues? Why did they leave their cultural roots and where did they arrive, where did the Afro-American culture find their new home? First of all I will concentrate on the demographic, social and cultural changes the Afro American population caused to move in the big cities and how their life and living conditions changed. There were three social changes taking place in the first half of the twentieth century that led to urban blues.
Robben Ford's Urban Blues Guitar Revolution
Author: Robben Ford
Publisher: WWW.Fundamental-Changes.com
ISBN: 9781789332346
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 96
Book Description
Robben Ford's Urban Blues Guitar Revolution teaches you the rhythm and soloing language of authentic blues guitar, chord by chord, lick by lick, then takes you on a journey through increasingly more modern ideas.
Publisher: WWW.Fundamental-Changes.com
ISBN: 9781789332346
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 96
Book Description
Robben Ford's Urban Blues Guitar Revolution teaches you the rhythm and soloing language of authentic blues guitar, chord by chord, lick by lick, then takes you on a journey through increasingly more modern ideas.
New York City Blues
Author: Larry Simon
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496834720
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 403
Book Description
A first-ever book on the subject, New York City Blues: Postwar Portraits from Harlem to the Village and Beyond offers a deep dive into the blues venues and performers in the city from the 1940s through the 1990s. Interviews in this volume bring the reader behind the scenes of the daily and performing lives of working musicians, songwriters, and producers. The interviewers capture their voices — many sadly deceased — and reveal the changes in styles, the connections between performers, and the evolution of New York blues. New York City Blues is an oral history conveyed through the words of the performers themselves and through the photographs of Robert Schaffer, supplemented by the input of Val Wilmer, Paul Harris, and Richard Tapp. The book also features the work of award-winning author and blues scholar John Broven. Along with writing a history of New York blues for the introduction, Broven contributes interviews with Rose Marie McCoy, “Doc” Pomus, Billy Butler, and Billy Bland. Some of the artists interviewed by Larry Simon include Paul Oscher, John Hammond Jr., Rosco Gordon, Larry Dale, Bob Gaddy, “Wild” Jimmy Spruill, and Bobby Robinson. Also featured are over 160 photographs, including those by respected photographers Anton Mikofsky, Wilmer, and Harris, that provide a vivid visual history of the music and the times from Harlem to Greenwich Village and neighboring areas. New York City Blues delivers a strong sense of the major personalities and places such as Harlem’s Apollo Theatre, the history, and an in-depth introduction to the rich variety, sounds, and styles that made up the often-overlooked New York City blues scene.
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496834720
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 403
Book Description
A first-ever book on the subject, New York City Blues: Postwar Portraits from Harlem to the Village and Beyond offers a deep dive into the blues venues and performers in the city from the 1940s through the 1990s. Interviews in this volume bring the reader behind the scenes of the daily and performing lives of working musicians, songwriters, and producers. The interviewers capture their voices — many sadly deceased — and reveal the changes in styles, the connections between performers, and the evolution of New York blues. New York City Blues is an oral history conveyed through the words of the performers themselves and through the photographs of Robert Schaffer, supplemented by the input of Val Wilmer, Paul Harris, and Richard Tapp. The book also features the work of award-winning author and blues scholar John Broven. Along with writing a history of New York blues for the introduction, Broven contributes interviews with Rose Marie McCoy, “Doc” Pomus, Billy Butler, and Billy Bland. Some of the artists interviewed by Larry Simon include Paul Oscher, John Hammond Jr., Rosco Gordon, Larry Dale, Bob Gaddy, “Wild” Jimmy Spruill, and Bobby Robinson. Also featured are over 160 photographs, including those by respected photographers Anton Mikofsky, Wilmer, and Harris, that provide a vivid visual history of the music and the times from Harlem to Greenwich Village and neighboring areas. New York City Blues delivers a strong sense of the major personalities and places such as Harlem’s Apollo Theatre, the history, and an in-depth introduction to the rich variety, sounds, and styles that made up the often-overlooked New York City blues scene.
Urban Rhythms Urban Blues
Author: Wiley A. Hall
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780964933606
Category : Reporters and reporting
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780964933606
Category : Reporters and reporting
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
Group Harmony
Author: Stuart L. Goosman
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 081220204X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
In 1948, the Orioles, a Baltimore-based vocal group, recorded "It's Too Soon to Know." Combining the sound of Tin Pan Alley with gospel and blues sensibilities, the Orioles saw their first hit reach #13 on the pop charts, thus introducing the nation to vocal rhythm & blues and paving the way for the most successful groups of the 1950s. In the first scholarly treatment of this influential musical genre, Stuart Goosman chronicles the Orioles' story and that of myriad other black vocal groups in the postwar period. A few, like the Orioles, Cardinals, and Swallows from Baltimore and the Clovers from Washington, D.C., established the popularity of vocal rhythm & blues nationally. Dozens of other well-known groups (and hundreds of unknown ones) across the country cut records and performed until about 1960. Record companies initially marketed this music as rhythm & blues; today, group harmony continues to resonate for some as "doo-wop." Focusing in particular on Baltimore and Washington and drawing significantly from oral histories, Group Harmony details the emergence of vocal rhythm & blues groups from black urban neighborhoods. Group harmony was a source of empowerment for young singers, for it provided them with a means of expression and some aspect of control over their lives where there were limited alternatives. Through group harmony, young black males celebrated and musically confounded, when they could not overcome, complex issues of race, separatism, and assimilation during the postwar period. Group harmony also became a significant resource for the popular music industry. Goosman interviews dozens of performers, deejays, and industry professionals to examine the entrepreneurial promise of midcentury popular music and chronicle the convergence of music, place, and business, including the business of records, radio, promotion, and song writing. Featured in the book's account of the black urban roots of rhythm & blues are the recollections of singers from groups such as the Cardinals, Clovers, Dunbar Four, Four Bars of Rhythm, Five Blue Notes, Hi Fis, Plants, Swallows, and many others, including Jimmy McPhail, a well-known Washington vocalist; Deborah Chessler, the manager and songwriter for the original Orioles; Jesse Stone, the writer and arranger from Atlantic Records; Washington radio personality Jackson Lowe; and seminal black deejays Al ("Big Boy") Jefferson, Maurice ("Hot Rod") Hulbert, and Tex Gathings.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 081220204X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
In 1948, the Orioles, a Baltimore-based vocal group, recorded "It's Too Soon to Know." Combining the sound of Tin Pan Alley with gospel and blues sensibilities, the Orioles saw their first hit reach #13 on the pop charts, thus introducing the nation to vocal rhythm & blues and paving the way for the most successful groups of the 1950s. In the first scholarly treatment of this influential musical genre, Stuart Goosman chronicles the Orioles' story and that of myriad other black vocal groups in the postwar period. A few, like the Orioles, Cardinals, and Swallows from Baltimore and the Clovers from Washington, D.C., established the popularity of vocal rhythm & blues nationally. Dozens of other well-known groups (and hundreds of unknown ones) across the country cut records and performed until about 1960. Record companies initially marketed this music as rhythm & blues; today, group harmony continues to resonate for some as "doo-wop." Focusing in particular on Baltimore and Washington and drawing significantly from oral histories, Group Harmony details the emergence of vocal rhythm & blues groups from black urban neighborhoods. Group harmony was a source of empowerment for young singers, for it provided them with a means of expression and some aspect of control over their lives where there were limited alternatives. Through group harmony, young black males celebrated and musically confounded, when they could not overcome, complex issues of race, separatism, and assimilation during the postwar period. Group harmony also became a significant resource for the popular music industry. Goosman interviews dozens of performers, deejays, and industry professionals to examine the entrepreneurial promise of midcentury popular music and chronicle the convergence of music, place, and business, including the business of records, radio, promotion, and song writing. Featured in the book's account of the black urban roots of rhythm & blues are the recollections of singers from groups such as the Cardinals, Clovers, Dunbar Four, Four Bars of Rhythm, Five Blue Notes, Hi Fis, Plants, Swallows, and many others, including Jimmy McPhail, a well-known Washington vocalist; Deborah Chessler, the manager and songwriter for the original Orioles; Jesse Stone, the writer and arranger from Atlantic Records; Washington radio personality Jackson Lowe; and seminal black deejays Al ("Big Boy") Jefferson, Maurice ("Hot Rod") Hulbert, and Tex Gathings.
The Cambridge Companion to Blues and Gospel Music
Author: Allan Moore
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521001076
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 238
Book Description
From Robert Johnson to Aretha Franklin, Mahalia Jackson to John Lee Hooker, blues and gospel artists figure heavily in the mythology of twentieth-century culture. The styles in which they sang have proved hugely influential to generations of popular singers, from the wholesale adoptions of singers like Robert Cray or James Brown, to the subtler vocal appropriations of Mariah Carey. Their own music, and how it operates, is not, however, always seen as valid in its own right. This book provides an overview of both these genres, which worked together to provide an expression of twentieth-century black US experience. Their histories are unfolded and questioned; representative songs and lyrical imagery are analysed; perspectives are offered from the standpoint of the voice, the guitar, the piano, and also that of the working musician. The book concludes with a discussion of the impact the genres have had on mainstream musical culture.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521001076
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 238
Book Description
From Robert Johnson to Aretha Franklin, Mahalia Jackson to John Lee Hooker, blues and gospel artists figure heavily in the mythology of twentieth-century culture. The styles in which they sang have proved hugely influential to generations of popular singers, from the wholesale adoptions of singers like Robert Cray or James Brown, to the subtler vocal appropriations of Mariah Carey. Their own music, and how it operates, is not, however, always seen as valid in its own right. This book provides an overview of both these genres, which worked together to provide an expression of twentieth-century black US experience. Their histories are unfolded and questioned; representative songs and lyrical imagery are analysed; perspectives are offered from the standpoint of the voice, the guitar, the piano, and also that of the working musician. The book concludes with a discussion of the impact the genres have had on mainstream musical culture.
City Songs and American Life, 1900-1950
Author: Michael L. Lasser
Publisher:
ISBN: 1580469523
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
"Nothing defines the songs of the great American songbook more richly and persuasively than their urban sensibility. During the first half of the twentieth century, songwriter such as Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, Dorothy Fields, George and Ira Gershwin, and Thomas 'Fats' Waller flourished in New York City, the home of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Harlem. Many of these remarkably deft and forceful creators were native New Yorkers. Others got to Gotham as fast as they could. Either way, it was as if, from their vantage point on the West Side of Manhattan, these artists were describing America--not its geography of politics, but its heart--to Americans and to the world at large. In City songs and American life, 1900-1950, renowned author and broadcaster Michael Lasser offers an evocative and probing account of the popular songs--including some written originally for the stage or screen--that America heard, and sang, and danced to during the turbulent first half of the twentieth century. Lasser demonstrates how the spirit of the teeming city pervaded these wildly diverse songs. Often that spirit took form overtly in songs that portrayed the glamor of Broadway of the energy and jazz age culture of Harlem. But a city-bred spirit--or even a specifically New York City way of feeling and talking--also infused many other widely known and loved songs, stretching from the early decades of the century to the twenties (the age of the flapper, bathtub gin, and women's right to vote), the Great Depression, and, finally, World War II. Throughout this remarkable book, Lasser emphasizes how the soul of city life, as echoes in the nation's songs, developed and changed in tandem with economic, social, and political currents in America as a whole"--Dust jacket flap.
Publisher:
ISBN: 1580469523
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
"Nothing defines the songs of the great American songbook more richly and persuasively than their urban sensibility. During the first half of the twentieth century, songwriter such as Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, Dorothy Fields, George and Ira Gershwin, and Thomas 'Fats' Waller flourished in New York City, the home of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Harlem. Many of these remarkably deft and forceful creators were native New Yorkers. Others got to Gotham as fast as they could. Either way, it was as if, from their vantage point on the West Side of Manhattan, these artists were describing America--not its geography of politics, but its heart--to Americans and to the world at large. In City songs and American life, 1900-1950, renowned author and broadcaster Michael Lasser offers an evocative and probing account of the popular songs--including some written originally for the stage or screen--that America heard, and sang, and danced to during the turbulent first half of the twentieth century. Lasser demonstrates how the spirit of the teeming city pervaded these wildly diverse songs. Often that spirit took form overtly in songs that portrayed the glamor of Broadway of the energy and jazz age culture of Harlem. But a city-bred spirit--or even a specifically New York City way of feeling and talking--also infused many other widely known and loved songs, stretching from the early decades of the century to the twenties (the age of the flapper, bathtub gin, and women's right to vote), the Great Depression, and, finally, World War II. Throughout this remarkable book, Lasser emphasizes how the soul of city life, as echoes in the nation's songs, developed and changed in tandem with economic, social, and political currents in America as a whole"--Dust jacket flap.