Nat Hentoff

a novel

This school is driving me crazy

The Day They Came to Arrest the Book

Biography of "America's number one pacifist", Hentoff's excellent work captures the many facets of Muste's life -- from the mainline ministry, to organizing labor unions, to activist pacifism. A compelling biography and also a first-rate look at the United States in the first sixty years of the twnetieth century.

The Story of A. J. Muste

Peace Agitator

Twelve-year-old Sam, who has a magnetic attraction for trouble, finds it increasingly difficult to attend the school where his father is headmaster.

A Novel

This School is Driving Me Crazy

Albert McCarthy

New Perspectives on the History of Jazz by Twelve of the World's Foremost Jazz Critics and Scholars

Jazz

This book is a selective tribute and guide to the jazz life, the players, and the music. It is not a chronological or comprehensive history, but rather a personal exploration through variegated seminal figures of a nature of the music (and how it keeps changing). And it is about the nature of those who make the music - temperaments as disparate as those of Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. It tells, too, of the political economy of jazz, its internationalization, the continuing surprises of its futher frontiers.

Jazz is

Dan Ouellette

Finding the Right Notes

Ron Carter

From the Bill of Rights, freedom of speech, and civil rights to jazz, blues and country music, Nat Hentoff has written about American life for decades, in the Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker, the Village Voice, the Wall Street Journal, and JazzTimes, among countless other publications. The New York Times has hailed Hentoff's work as "an invigorating and entertaining reminder of why freedom of expression matters." The Washington Post Book World has called Hentoff "an old-fashioned music lover who likes, as Charlie Parker once put it, 'to listen to the stories' that good music tells." Nat Hentoff is a legend.And now, for the first time, here are his most important writings of the past twenty years—the quintessential Hentoff on everything from Cardinal John O'Connor to Merle Haggard, racism and political correctness in the classroom to Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie to the censorship of Huckleberry Finn. Controversial? You bet. Whatever the topic, The Nat Hentoff Reader shows a man of passion and insight, of streetwise wit and polished eloquence-a true American original.

The Nat Hentoff Reader

Nat Shapiro

Short biographies of twenty-one outstanding jazz figures provide an overview of the lives and events that shaped a major aspect of American music

The Jazz Makers

Leading jazz composers and performers reveal their personal feelings toward the history and future of the art form

The Story of Jazz as Told by the Men who Made it

Hear Me Talkin' to Ya

Boston Boy is Nat Hentoff's memoir of growing up in the Roxbury section of Boston in the 1930s and 1940s. He grapples with Judaism and anti-Semitism. He develops a passion for outspoken journalism and First Amendment freedom of speech. And he discovers his love of jazz music as he follows, and is befriended by, the great jazz musicians of the day, including Duke Ellington and Lester Young. "Nat Hentoff knows jazz. And it comes alive in this wonderful, touching memoir." —Ken Burns, creator of the PBS series "Jazz" "This memoir of [Hentoff's] youth should be appreciated not only by adults who grew up through the fires of their own youthful rebellion, but by those restless young people who are now bringing their own views and questions to the world they are inheriting. They could learn from this example that rebels can be gentle as well as enraged and compassionate in their commitment." —New York Times Book Review "[A] charmingly bittersweet memoir." —Boston Globe "This is a touching book about a painful, wonderful time in Boston…I loved it." —Anthony Lewis "[A] richly textured, vivid memoir of growing up in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood…It weaves a colorful and varied tapestry." —Senator Paul Wellstone

Growing up with Jazz and Other Rebellious Passions

Boston Boy

Through stories and portraits of the strong personalities around him, Nat Hentoff brings to life the political, familial, and musical forces that shaped his unique perspectives on the world.

Growing Up with Jazz and Other Rebellious Passions

Interviews with and profiles of some of the nation's greatest jazz, country, and gospel musicians are joined by personal commentary and reminiscence by the noted critic, columnist, and jazz aficionado's pieces that first appeared in The Wall Street Journal. National ad/promo.

Nat Hentoff on Jazz and Country Music

Listen to the Stories

Traces the origins of jazz in the urban culture of black America and profiles such pioneers as Count Basie, Charles Mingus, and John Coltrane

The Jazz Life

“Nat Hentoff may very well be the foremost jazz historian in the world because he was there to witness firsthand the music’s evolution from big band and swing to fusion and bossa nova; and to dive into the souls of the men and women who created it from Ellington, Basie, Miles, Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Washington, among many others. At the Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene is an invaluable archive of not only the musical influence of America’s only indigenous music on the world, but its enormous impact as an engine for social change as well. It is a book that should be read by every young musician, music fan, and educator in America.”—Quincy Jones "The very best witnesses in the worlds of the law, aesthetic evaluation, social contexts of imposing significance, and artistic public performance are those who accurately understand what they have seen or what they are seeing. Nat Hentoff has been and continues to be a star witness in every one of those arenas. One of the greatest contributions of his jazz writing is that he has never felt the need to condescend to black people or to let the dictates of sociology diminish the universal significance of what they do when they do it well. Nat knows that so many jazz musicians have done what they do superbly, quite often expressing themselves beyond the narrows of color. As sensitive to the Americana of jazz as he is to its transcendent revelations about the sound of the human heart, Nat Hentoff is part of our American luck."—Stanley Crouch “At the Jazz Band Ball is full of nuggets from Nat's rich lode of wit and wisdom, gleaned in a lifetime of fellowship with jazz and its makers.”—Dan Morgenstern, Director, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University; author of Living With Jazz: A Reader

Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene

At the Jazz Band Ball

Hentoff's timely, fact-filled, and illuminating book describes the current assault on free speech from all points of the political spectrum--even from the traditionally liberal groups now intent on repressing opinions thought "politically incorrect".

How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other

Free Speech for Me--but Not for Thee

Who would have believed that The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn could cause the worst crisis in the history of George Mason High School? Certainly not Barney Roth, editor of the school paper. But when a small but vocal group of students and parents decide that the book is racist, sexist, and immoral--and should be removed from reading lists and the school library--Barney takes matters into his own hands. When the Huck Finn issue comes up for a hearing, Barney decides to print his story about previous censorship efforts at school. He's sure that investigative reporting and publicity can help the cause. But is he too late to turn the tide of censorship?

In this marvelous oral history, the words of such legends as Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, and Billy Holiday trace the birth, growth, and changes in jazz over the years.

Patricia Bosworth

Phil Stern

Brett Ratner

Carol McCusker

"Phil Stern: A Life's Work is the long-awaited magnum opus from one of the twentieth century's premier celebrity and documentary photographers. His three great bodies of work on World War II, Jazz, and Hollywood are collected and presented for the first time in this stunning tribute.

Nat Hentoff

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