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7 books match the query 'New Age'

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China Enters the Twentieth Century

Chang Chih-tung and the Issues of a New Age, 1895-1909

Daniel H. Bays

University of Michigan Press, 1978

Focusing on the major currents of reforms and nationalism, China Enters the Twentieth Century provides an insightful look into the major changes, and those advocating for them, which took hold in China at the turn of the century. With the reorganization of central government and the array of new, competing interests and ideals, stemming from dynastic nobles to populist civilians, contemporary scholars have had many possible methods of approaching this period. However, Daniel H. Bays turns an eye to Chang Chih-tung (1837–1909), an eminent politician and Viceroy of Liangguang, whose political life serves well to mark the course of the Chinese political and cultural landscape. In doing so, Bays challenges old ideas on what provided the foundation for China's entry into the twentieth century.

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Healing Songs

Ted Gioia

Duke University Press, 2006

While the first healers were musicians who relied on rhythm and song to help cure the sick, over time Western thinkers and doctors lost touch with these traditions. In the West, for almost two millennia, the roles of the healer and the musician have been strictly separated.

Until recently, that is. Over the past few decades there has been a resurgence of interest in healing music. In the midst of this nascent revival, Ted Gioia, a musician, composer, and widely praised author, offers the first detailed exploration of the uses of music for curative purposes from ancient times to the present. Gioia’s inquiry into the restorative powers of sound moves effortlessly from the history of shamanism to the role of Orpheus as a mythical figure linking Eastern and Western ideas about therapeutic music, and from Native American healing ceremonies to what clinical studies can reveal about the efficacy of contemporary methods of sonic healing.

Gioia considers a broad range of therapies, providing a thoughtful, impartial guide to their histories and claims, their successes and failures. He examines a host of New Age practices, including toning, Cymatics, drumming circles, and the Tomatis method. And he explores how the medical establishment has begun to recognize and incorporate the therapeutic power of song. Acknowledging that the drumming circle will not—and should not—replace the emergency room, nor the shaman the cardiologist, Gioia suggests that the most promising path is one in which both the latest medical science and music—with its capacity to transform attitudes and bring people together—are brought to bear on the multifaceted healing process.

In Healing Songs, as in its companion volume Work Songs, Gioia moves beyond studies of music centered on specific performers, time periods, or genres to illuminate how music enters into and transforms the experiences of everyday life.

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Nature Religion in America

From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age

Catherine L. Albanese

University of Chicago Press, 1990

This ground-breaking study reveals an unorganized and previously unacknowledged religion at the heart of American culture. Nature, Albanese argues, has provided a compelling religious center throughout American history.

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Pataphysics and Surrealism in Alabama

A Cultural History

Steven Harris

University of Alabama Press, 2026

An exploration of the surrealist artists, musicians, and performers who forged a unique experimental arts community in Alabama

Pataphysics and Surrealism in Alabama: A Cultural History is the first book to uncover a remarkable chapter in American experimental art, music, dance and writing, tracing the activities of a creative group known as Raudelunas, the music collective Transcendprovisation, and the surrealist association initially called Glass Veal: a series of interrelated artistic and cultural movements that originated in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, Alabama, during the 1970s. Drawing on extensive archival research and firsthand accounts, including interviews with twenty-six participants in these groups, sound recordings, publications, and other primary sources, Steven Harris traces the history of a vibrant creative community that began when three University of Alabama students started improvising music together and encouraged others to join them.

From these sessions emerged a dynamic network of performers and artists whose work challenged conventional boundaries between disciplines. Inspired by musical improvisation, surrealism, and pataphysics, participants embraced spontaneity and absurdity as they developed a positive expression of creativity that was both uniquely Southern and sharply distinctive from the dominant culture that surrounded them.

Harris situates these movements within broader histories of Alabama, Dada, pataphysics, surrealism, and improvised music and dance while charting their lasting influence on the artists who participated in them. Featuring a timeline of major events, biographies of key members, and an anthology of representative writings, Pataphysics and Surrealism in Alabama is an essential contribution to the history of American experimental culture.

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