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Searching... Woodburn Public Library | 910.453 ALEXANDER | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
According to Eric Clapton, John Mayer, and the late Stevie Ray Vaughn, Buddy Guy is the greatest blues guitarist of all time. An enormous influence on these musicians as well as Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck, he is the living embodiment of Chicago blues.
Guy's epic story stands at the absolute nexus of modern blues. He came to Chicago from rural Louisiana in the fiftiesÂthe very moment when urban blues were electrifying our culture. He was a regular session player at Chess Records. Willie Dixon was his mentor. He was a sideman in the bands of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. He and Junior Wells formed a band of their own. In the sixties, he became a recording star in his own right.
When I Left Home tells Guy's picaresque story in his own unique voice, that of a storyteller who remembers everything, including blues masters in their prime and the exploding, evolving culture of music that happened all around him.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The unparalleled adventure and ordeal of Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew, stranded on the Antarctic ice for 20 months beginning January 20, 1915, then forced to row a 22-foot boat 850 miles across storm-ravaged seas, has inspired at least three marvelous books: Shackleton's own memoir, South; Alfred Lansing's bestselling Endurance; and this stirring account by Alexander (The Way to Xanadu). In 1914, Shackleton sailed to Antarctica with 27 men in hopes of being the first human to transverse the continent. But his ship, the Endurance, was trapped, then crushed, by ice in the Weddell Sea, propelling the party into a nightmare of cold and near starvation. Alexander, relying extensively on journals by crew members, some never published, as well as on myriad other sources, delivers a spellbinding story of human courage (and occasional venality) in the face of daunting odds. She succinctly and boldly captures the character of the men and of the terrible land- and seascape they crossed toward salvation. What makes this book especially exciting, however, are the 170 previously unpublished photos by the expedition's photographer, Frank Hurley: stark, artfully composed tributes to the savage beauty of the ice and to the fortitude of the men and their dogs. Not one of the men died during their sojourn in a freezing hell; as Alexander makes clear in her gripping, emotionally resonant book, this incredible fact bears witness not only to Shackleton's leadership but to the strength of the human spirit. Agent, Anthony Sheil. Author tour. (Nov.) FYI: The Endurance is being published in association with the American Museum of Natural History, which in March 1999 will open an exhibit, curated by Alexander, chronicling Shackleton's voyage. A feature-length IMAX film on the subject will be released then, as well. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
The saga of the Endurance and her crew--Shackleton's Antarctic fiasco turned heroic melodrama--is discovered anew through the expedition's previously unpublished photos and Alexander's (The Way to Xanadu, 1994, etc.) well-turned storytelling. The Heroic Age was coming to a close when Sir Ernest Shackleton took off in pursuit of one of exploration's last prizes: the crossing on foot of the Antarctic continent. But his boat never made its intended southernmost harbor. Instead, it got stuck in ice in the Weddell Sea, abode of 200-mile-per-hour winds and 100-degree-below-zero temperatures. Thus began two years of chilly misfortune, met by the crew's perseverance, and conveyed by Alexander in an elegant, subdued manner: The eerie portents of the ice close ever tighter around the Endurance, the helpless, hopeless, endless days follow one another on the ice pack, and finally Shackleton makes an outrageous bid to reach South Georgia Island, 900 miles distant, in one of the abandoned mother ship's small boats--through a hurricane, no less. Accompanying the expedition, luckily, was photographer James Hurley, who was to chronicle the exploit visually both for scientific purposes and entertainment value. His images, which miraculously survived the ordeal, give the story an added palpability in time and space. Many of the photographs are not only quite beautiful, particularly of the Endurance as it sits icebound yet under desperate full sail, but also moving, with crew members putting on their best faces as death sat waiting just outside the picture frame. Published in conjunction with an exhibition about the expedition at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, this book occupies a prize spot in the already abundant literature of polar exploration. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
A glorious failure, Ernest Shackleton's attempt to become the first transcontinental trekker of Antarctica turned into one of the all-time survival stories in the annals of adventure. Shackleton, an imperturbable leader, was also a savvy promoter who before embarking sold publishing rights and signed on a skilled photographer. Unfortunately for commercial aspirations, World War I deadened contemporary interest in Shackleton's story of being marooned on ice floes and islands for two years. But with the distance of time and an excellent narrator in Alexander, the epic achieves its stature. It developed after Shackleton, who came within 100 miles of being the first man to reach the South Pole in 1909, organized his new quest for glory. Instead of landing as planned, his ship Endurance became icebound in the Weddell Sea; the photographs of that predicament depict a beautiful tragedy--the ship, a doomed maiden, slowly crushed and sunk by the ice. Thus began the precarious retreat to civilization, which Alexander extols, citing the fortitude, resourcefulness, and luck of the crew, highlighted by Shackleton's 800-mile voyage to South Georgia, crossing the world's stormiest seas in an open lifeboat. An exhilarating retelling of a most popular saga in polar exploration. --Gilbert Taylor
Choice Review
In the annals of polar exploration, Sir Ernest Shackleton is remembered more for his failures than for his successes. Roald Amundsen deprived him of the honor of being the first to reach the South Pole; he then sought to become the first to cross Antarctica on foot. Even as the storm clouds of war began to gather in 1914, Shackleton and a crew of 27 set forth on the Endurance to accomplish this task. Published to accompany the American Museum of Natural History's exhibition on Shackleton's journey, this handsome and meticulously illustrated work chronicles his failure to accomplish this goal and describes in detail the trapping and crushing of the Endurance in the pack ice and the crew's dangerous and painful experiences on the drift ice. There is no question of Shackleton's strength as a leader, and Alexander poignantly portrays the suffering of the crew, their perilous journey in small open boats to Elephant Island, and Shackleton's epic voyage in an open 22-foot boat to South Georgia to obtain aid from the whaling station for his party. Frank Hurley's historic photographs have been brilliantly reproduced; this book may contain the most attractive photographs ever published on Antarctic exploration. General readers; undergraduates; graduates. P. D. Thomas; Wichita State University
Library Journal Review
During Shackleton's 1914 expedition to Antarctica, he and his crew were trapped on ice floes for 20 months. Alexander is curating a forthcoming exhibition on their plight. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.