Birth of the Cool: Beat, Bebop, and the American Avant Garde

by Lewis MacAdams

Book Overview

Miles Davis and Juliette Greco, Jackson Pollock and Jack Kerouac, Marlon Brando and Bob Dylan and William Burroughs.
What do all these people have in common? Fame, of course, and undeniable talent. But most of all, they were cool.
Birth of the Cool is a stunningly illustrated, brilliantly written cultural history of the American avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s -- the decades in which cool was born. From intimate interviews with...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684813548
• ISBN13: 9780684813547
• Release Date: February 2001
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Cool is

This is a pretty engrossing book - if you think you know about "cool" check it out. Lewis puts together stuff in avery original manner and helps one to get a perspectiveon what cool is.The section on DT Suzuki and cool caught my attention.The chapter was called "The Bodhisattvas of Cool." Did you know that Siddartha means , "He who accomplishes his goals."The layout of the book is cool and the type changes so things stay cool.

what is cool?

There is a new commercial on the air right now for, of all things, the new domain .tv. It is simply a procession of images: a dog, a skier, a fat guy in a swimming pool. The voice-over is simply a guys saying "cool," ot "not "cool" whenever a new image is revealed. as I watched it, I couldn't help but think, "what the hell happened to cool." When pretty much everything is cool, nothing is. Lewis MacAdams' book is thus pretty timely. He takes us back to the guys who really were cool. They were outlaws, outside the mainstream. Most people thought they were freak, but they didn't care because they were cool. Anyone who has read Macadams' poetry or journalism is awaere of his talents. It is about time he put them to something larger.