Whitman's famous poem, accompanied by linoleum-cut illustrations, depicts people at work all over an earlier America.

The first edition of American Popular Music introduces the history and influence of American music within the broader context of American culture. It reveals how the history of American music connects to contemporary popular music through specific examples showing how past styles and performers have influenced current musical styles. Presents a balanced, accurate, and comprehensive portrayal of American popular music within a narrative, conversational style while discussing various musical styles and performers in a larger social and historical context that provides a larger perspective on American cultural history. The book relates the development of each musical genre to its historical period and places individual performers and styles within their larger social or artistic context. It includes numerous excerpts from literary works that reveal the tremendous influence popular music has had on American culture. It also presents over 300 photos and illustrations, including album covers, posters, sheet music illustrations, and song lyrics. An important reference for any reader interested in the history of American popular music.

"With Audiotopia, Kun emerges as a pre-eminent analyst, interpreter, and theorist of inter-ethnic dialogue in US music, literature, and visual art. This book is a guide to how scholarship will look in the future--the first fully realized product of a new generation of scholars thrown forth by tumultuous social ferment and eager to talk about the world that they see emerging around them."--George Lipsitz, author of Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture "The range and depth of Audiotopia is thrilling. It's not only that Josh Kun knows so much-it's that he knows what to make of what he knows."--Greil Marcus, author of Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century "The way Josh Kun writes about what he hears, the way he unravels word, sound, and power is breathtaking, provocative, and original. A bold, expansive, and lyrical book, Audiotopia is a record of crossings, textures, tangents, and ideas you will want to play again and again."--Jeff Chang, author of Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

"I Hear My People Singing shines light on a historic Black neighborhood in the heart of Princeton, New Jersey. Some 50 first-person accounts, drawn from an oral history collaboration of African American residents, Princeton undergraduates, and their professor, Kathryn Watterson, detail life in this northern Jim Crow town for the past three centuries. Their stories reveal how the community's roots are intertwined with the enslaved people who were key to building the town and a university whose first nine presidents were slave owners. Chapter introductions provide context, as does the foreword by scholar, theologian, and activist Cornel West. Alive with photographs, I Hear My People Singing offers a narrative of inspiring Black experience that contributes to and illuminates the history of the United States and the nation's conversations on race."--Back cover.

In 1855 Walt Whitman published Leaves of Grass, the work which defined him as one of America's most influential voices, and which he added to throughout his life. A collection of astonishing originality and intensity, it spoke of politics, sexual emancipation and what it meant to be an American. From the joyful 'Song of Myself' and 'I Sing the Body Electric' to the elegiac 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd', Whitman's art fuses oratory, journalism and song in a vivid celebration of humanity.