Results by title
5 books match the query '1940-1980'
Baby You're a Rich Man
Suing the Beatles for Fun and ProfitStan Soocher
University Press of New England, 2015
Carne de Dios
A NovelHomero Aridjis; Translated by Chloe Garcia Roberts
University of Arizona Press, 2025
María Sabina, the renowned Mazatec healer, spends her days in the small town of Huautla de Jiménez selling produce at the market and foraging under the new moon for the sacred mushrooms that grow near her home—her Holy Children, Carne de Dios, or Flesh of God. But her life changes forever when an amateur mycologist from New York, with a cameraman in tow, visits her to experience for himself the mushroom ceremony, or velada, he knows only from whispers in anthropological records. When he publishes an unauthorized article about his experience in LIFE Magazine 1957, the stage is set for an explosive encounter between the burgeoning international counterculture and the woman who became an unwilling icon of the psychedelic revolution.
Homero Aridjis’s novel, vividly translated by Chloe Garcia Roberts, tells the story of the motley crew of bohemians, researchers, and holy fools, both real and imagined, who descend on the town of Huautla de Jiménez searching for inspiration, distraction, and salvation in the sacred mushrooms. These seekers melt in and out of a narrative infiltrated by the slipstream logic of dreams. As John Lennon plays jazz on the patio of the Hotel Grande, Juan Rulfo contemplates horror movies, and Allen Ginsberg recites mantras at Philip Lamantia’s wedding, María Sabina’s life is increasingly thrown into turmoil.
Carne de Dios is a masterful and often humorous blend of history, myth, and poetic imagination, captured in a translation that mirrors the hallucinatory beauty of Aridjis’s original Spanish. Aridjis’s intimate portrayal of María Sabina, informed by his personal connection to her, serves as both a tribute to her enduring legacy and a critical reflection on the wave of global interest in mushroom culture still gaining momentum today.
This English translation includes an introduction by the translator and an afterword by the author.
Let Me Take You Down
Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields ForeverJonathan Cott
University of Minnesota Press, 2024
The conception, creation, recording, and significance of the Beatles’ “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever”
John Lennon wrote “Strawberry Fields Forever” in Almería, Spain, in fall 1966, and in November, in response to that song, Paul McCartney wrote “Penny Lane” at his home in London. A culmination of what was one of the most life-altering and chaotic years in the Beatles’ career, these two songs composed the 1967 double A-side 45 rpm record that has often been called the greatest single in the history of popular music and was, according to Beatles producer George Martin, “the best record we ever made.”
In Let Me Take You Down: Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever, Jonathan Cott recounts the conception and creation of these songs; describes the tumultuous events and experiences that led the Beatles to call it quits as a touring band and redefine themselves solely as recording artists; and details the complex, seventy-hour recording process that produced seven minutes of indelible music. In writing about these songs, he also focuses on them as inspired artistic expressions of two unique ways of experiencing and being in the world, as Lennon takes us down to Strawberry Fields and McCartney takes us back to Penny Lane.
In order to gain new vistas and multiple perspectives on these multifaceted songs, Cott also engages in conversation with five remarkable people: media artist Laurie Anderson; guitarist Bill Frisell; actor Richard Gere; Jungian analyst Margaret Klenck; and urban planner, writer, and musician Jonathan F. P. Rose. The result is a wide-ranging, illuminating exploration of the musical, literary, psychological, cultural, and spiritual aspects of two of the most acclaimed songs in rock and roll history.
My Private Lennon
Explorations from a Fan Who Never ScreamedSibbie O'Sullivan
The Ohio State University Press, 2020
My Private Lennon charts the author’s realization that the Beatles, especially John Lennon, were a crucial force in her development. A radical departure from other books written by Beatles fans, My Private Lennon invites its readers to consider subjects not usually found in works about Lennon and the band, such as the constraints of memory, the male body, grief, the female breast, race, cultural issues, and the importance of privacy in our over-mediated world. In pieces that engage cultural issues and historical contexts, My Private Lennon creates a witty and provocative intimacy with readers who value the power of art to change one’s life and who love John Lennon and the Beatles.
Starting Over with John and Yoko
The PhotographsRoger Farrington
Rutgers University Press, 2026
“This is one to linger over.” —Publishers Weekly
On August 7, 1980, John Lennon and Yoko Ono made their triumphant return to the recording studio after a self-imposed five-year absence. Roger Farrington, an up-and-coming photographer from Boston, was hired to get “the shot” that would announce their comeback. It would be Lennon’s most intense press scrutiny since the heady days of the Beatles’ maiden voyage to America in 1964, and for Farrington, it would be the assignment of a lifetime. Just four months later, Lennon’s assassination would plunge the world into mourning.
Reproducing, for the first time, the entire run of Farrington’s iconic photographs from that day, Starting Over transports readers back to 1980 and into Manhattan’s Hit Factory, where Lennon and Ono recorded their acclaimed LP Double Fantasy. With supporting photos and other ephemera, Farrington and renowned Beatles historian Kenneth Womack capture a poignant moment in music history and provide an insider’s look at celebrity photography in the pre-digital age.