{"title":"David Hajdu","description":"\u003cp\u003eDavid Hajdu’s works offer a captivating blend of \u003cstrong\u003earts and culture\u003c\/strong\u003e exploration with deeply personal insights. His writing navigates the vibrant intersections of music, literature, and history, capturing the spirit of creative revolution and the lives behind iconic moments.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eReaders can immerse themselves in compelling \u003cem\u003ebiographies and memoirs\u003c\/em\u003e that illuminate the complexities of artistic figures and cultural phenomena. Hajdu’s storytelling invites reflection on the forces shaping creativity and the stories that define a generation.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"positively-4th-street-by-david-hajdu-9780747558262","title":"Positively 4th Street","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1966, when Bob Dylan, age twenty-five, disappeared from public view, he closed a chapter on one of the most fascinating stories in post-war cultural history. In just five years, Dylan had become a spokesman for the counterculture; Greenwich Village the epicentre of youth style; and folk music—once played by earnest throwbacks—had been crossed with rock 'n' roll to form a thoughtful, literate, new musical style.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePositively 4th Street\u003c\/em\u003e relates just how folk became rock by looking at four young beatniks and their rise to fame: Bob Dylan, his part-time lover Joan Baez, her sister Mimi, and Mimi's husband, the writer Richard Farina. It is that rare find—a new story to tell of a moment no one can forget.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Allen \u0026 Unwin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46845541449964,"sku":"9780747558262","price":36.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/54a300f44bfdf0664da9cf392680db68.jpg?v=1758965511"},{"product_id":"a-revolution-in-three-acts-by-david-hajdu-9780231191838","title":"A Revolution in Three Acts","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBert Williams—a Black man forced to perform in blackface who challenged the stereotypes of minstrelsy. Eva Tanguay—an entertainer with the signature song \"I Don't Care\" who flouted the rules of propriety to redefine womanhood for the modern age. Julian Eltinge—a female impersonator who entranced and unnerved audiences by embodying the feminine ideal Tanguay rejected. At the turn of the twentieth century, they became three of the most provocative and popular performers in vaudeville, the form in which American mass entertainment first took shape.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Revolution in Three Acts\u003c\/em\u003e explores how these vaudeville stars defied the standards of their time to change how their audiences thought about what it meant to be American, to be Black, to be a woman or a man. The writer David Hajdu and the artist John Carey collaborate in this work of graphic nonfiction, crafting powerful portrayals of Williams, Tanguay, and Eltinge to show how they transformed American culture. Hand-drawn images give vivid visual form to the lives and work of the book's subjects and their world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis book is at once a deft telling of three intricately entwined stories, a lush evocation of a performance milieu with unabashed entertainment value, and an eye-opening account of a key moment in American cultural history with striking parallels to present-day questions of race, gender, and sexual identity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47429961744620,"sku":"9780231191838","price":37.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9780231191838.jpg?v=1774559833"},{"product_id":"the-uncanny-muse-by-david-hajdu-9780393540833","title":"The Uncanny Muse","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat does it mean to be human in a world where machines, too, can be artists? \u003cem\u003eThe Uncanny Muse\u003c\/em\u003e explores the history of automation in the arts and delves into one of the most momentous and controversial aspects of AI: artificial creativity. The adoption of technology and machinery has long transformed the world, but as the potential for artificial intelligence expands, David Hajdu examines the new, increasingly urgent questions about technology's role in culture.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFrom the life-size mechanical doll that made headlines in Victorian London to the doll's modern AI–pop star counterpart, Hajdu traces the fascinating, varied ways in which inventors and artists have sought to emulate mental processes and mechanize creative production. For decades, machines and artists have engaged in expressing the human condition—along with the condition of living with machines—through player pianos, broadcasting technology, electric organs, digital movie effects, synthesizers, and motion capture. By communicating and informing human knowledge, the machines have exerted considerable influence on the history of art—and often more influence than humans have been willing to recognize. As Hajdu proclaims: \"before machine learning, there was machine teaching.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWith thoughtful, wide-ranging, and surprising turns from Berry Gordy and George Harrison to Andy Warhol and Stevie Wonder, David Hajdu takes a novel and contrarian approach: he sees how machines through the ages have enabled creativity, not stifled it—and \u003cem\u003eThe Uncanny Muse\u003c\/em\u003e sees no reason why this shouldn't be the case with AI today.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47433079095532,"sku":"9780393540833","price":62.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9780393540833.jpg?v=1774765612"},{"product_id":"the-night-before-by-david-hajdu-9780231225168","title":"The Night Before","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor more than thirty years, David Hajdu has been a leading critic, casting light on artists past and present and on culture high and low. \u003ci\u003eThe Night Before\u003c\/i\u003e is a collection of his writing on music, comics, and popular culture, in which he brings historical perspective and a keen critical sensibility to unraveling underappreciated or misunderstood works. These essays encompass an extraordinarily wide range of artists—from Billie Holiday to Billie Eilish—and themes, from the wails for racial justice by the \"blues queens\" of the 1920s to the role of new technologies in the making of twenty-first-century pop hits.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn piercing but lively prose, Hajdu explores how women singers of three generations upended gendered expectations. With insatiable curiosity, he tackles topics from Bulgarian folk music to the cartoons of Roz Chast, and from the racially mixed roots of country music to the unhinged comic strip that foreshadowed \u003ci\u003ePeanuts.\u003c\/i\u003e Turning inward, Hajdu reflects on subjects such as his fascination with the Hudson River, whose waters flow in both directions. \u003ci\u003eThe Night Before\u003c\/i\u003e reveals how the currents of art and culture run forward and backward too, uniting past, present, and future in a ceaseless conversation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67808130367724,"sku":"9780231225168","price":52.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9780231225168-the-night-before-1.jpg?v=1792527467"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.live\/collections\/david-hajdu.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}