| Author: |
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Roxane Orgill
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| Title: |
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Dream Lucky: When FDR was in the White House, Count Basie was on the radio, and everyone wore a hat... |
| Moochable copies: |
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No copies available |
| Recommended: |
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| Topics: |
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| Published in: |
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English |
| Binding: |
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Hardcover |
| Pages: |
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242 |
| Date: |
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2008-04-22 |
| ISBN: |
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0060897503 |
| Publisher: |
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Smithsonian |
| Weight: |
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0.1 pounds |
| Size: |
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5.67 x 0.89 x 8.39 inches |
| Edition: |
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1 |
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| Description: |
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Product Description
The time: 1936-1938. The mood: Hopeful. It wasn't wartime, not yet. The music: The incomparable Count Basie and Benny Goodman, among others. The setting: Living rooms across America and, most of all, New York City. Dream Lucky covers politics, race, religion, arts, and sports, but the central focus is the period's soundtrack—specifically big band jazz—and the big-hearted piano player William "Count" Basie. His ascent is the narrative thread of the book—how he made it and what made his music different from the rest. But many other stories weave in and out: Amelia Earhart pursues her dream of flying "around the world at its waistline." Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., stages a boycott on 125th Street. And Mae West shocks radio listeners as a naked Eve tempting the snake. Critic Nat Hentoff praises the "precise originality" with which Roxane Orgill writes about music. In Dream Lucky, she magically lets readers hear the past.
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| Reviews: |
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BubbaCoop (USA: OH) (2008/03/25):
This book is a little difficult to describe. I guess you could call it "selective history-lite". It mostly discusses music and politics, but also a little sports, art, and quite a bit of race. The chapters are quite short (in chronological order) and easily digestible, which allows those of us with short attention spans to stick with the book. Set between 1936 and 1938, the criteria for which stories to tell and who to tell stories sometimes seems up to the whimsy of the author. Joe Louis and Count Basie are the bookends of the stories FDR and Elanor pop up from time to time as one would expect from the title. Initially I was looking for the through line to the book, and I thought it would be the radio. Joe Louis on the radio, Basie on the radio, FDR on the radio. It turns out not to even be that, but only the restrictions of the time frame and that author's own interests. The stories that are told, however, are certainly well researched. The list of references lets us know exactly where all this detailed information came from (which I begin to wonder about any time an author claims to know the internal thoughts of a non-fictional person.) For a work of fiction, a lot of thing go unexplained and I felt like the author expected me to already know about them. "Play five-sixty-five." The phrase is used twice in the book and never explained, although it seems to be some sort of gambling done in Harlem. If you're looking for a light-hearted quick read with some interesting stories from the time period, this is good book for that, but the only person who manages to get any depth at all (relative to others in the book, anyway) is Count Basie. If you want to go deeper with any of the other characters, a biography is probably more in order (maybe something from this author's source list at the back of the book).
benjclark (USA: CA) (2008/04/10):
This review is of the Uncorrected Proof. Remember that time in 6th grade you were to write a biography of Otto von Bismarck and you thought he invented the Bismarck donut, but he didn't? So you fluffed up the Britannica's three paragraphs out to two pages and your teacher wrote "Reads like you talk"? Remember? Unfortunately, that is how this book reads. It's either a poorly written novel or a bound set of notes for someone's history term paper. Readers cannot be sure as there are no footnotes although the many subjects are quoted extensively in what seem to be private thoughts and conversations. There are some notes dumped into the back, but no way to tell how these notes inform the text. The clunky writing smells like a junior high. I didn't care for the style, but the use of language was just bad. Diagramming sentences from passive into active voice bored me, and I enjoy dissecting sentences. Avoid.
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| URL: |
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http://bookmooch.com/0060897503 |
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