Glen Rock is situated in a valley along Codorus Creek in Shrewsbury Township in southern York County. Incorporated in 1860, the town is located on what once was a major north-south rail line that linked Harrisburg with Baltimore, Maryland. This important transportation link helped the town prosper with sewing factories, furniture factories, coach works, ironworks, and a nearby distillery. Although the rail link was severed in 1972 by Tropical Storm Agnes, Glen Rock survived to become a quiet residential community. Today the railroad that once ensured Glen Rock's existence continues to help the town with tourists, cyclists, and joggers as part of the York County Heritage Rail Trail. Through vintage images, Around Glen Rock chronicles this region's evolution while paying tribute to its roots.

Originally part of the Bergen County area known as Godwinville and then Ridgewood, Glen Rock voted to become a borough in 1894. The rock from which the borough took its name was deposited at the end of the last ice age by a retreating glacier. Local folklore tells of Native Americans, the Lenni Lenape, holding meetings on the rock. Early settlers used the rock as a landmark in deeds for the farms they created out of the heavily wooded land. Local streams powered gristmills and sawmills. By 1842, trains brought goods to the area, and within a decade, passenger trains carried the first of the daily commuters to and from New York City. Glen Rock, a photographic journey, documents the growth of the community from the late 1880s through the late 1950s. The early strawberry fields, farms, mills, and hotels made way for today's stores and homes. The dirt roads once used by horse and buggy, stagecoach, and bicycle were paved for early automobiles. The original schools became too small to hold the growing number of children, and new schools were built. Glen Rock's leaders created municipal departments, civic organizations, emergency services, businesses, and places of worship. Parades, picnics, and pageants entertained Glen Rockers. Wars and the Great Depression brought citizens together, and residents gathered to help each other and the nation.

In her author's note, Marion Winik writes that in Mexico on the Day of the Dead, "people build altars to their loved ones . . . they go to the cemetery and stay all night, praying, singing, drinking, wailing. They tell the sad stories and the noble ones; they eat cookies shaped like skeletons. They celebrate and mourn at once." Striking that balance, The Glen Rock Book of the Dead presents snapshot portraits of The Jeweler, The Driving Instructor, The Bad Influence, The Queen of New Jersey—and roughly fifty others who have touched Winik's life, from her son's second grade teacher to Keith Haring. Tied together by the inimitable, poignant voice of Winik, these losses form not only an autobiography but a story of our time, delivering a lyrical journey that ultimately raises the spirits.

By the time Jimi Hendrix died in 1970, the idea of a black man playing lead guitar in a rock band seemed exotic. Yet a mere ten years earlier, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley had stood among the most influential rock and roll performers. Why did rock and roll become “white”? Just around Midnight reveals the interplay of popular music and racial thought that was responsible for this shift within the music industry and in the minds of fans. Rooted in rhythm-and-blues pioneered by black musicians, 1950s rock and roll was racially inclusive and attracted listeners and performers across the color line. In the 1960s, however, rock and roll gave way to rock: a new musical ideal regarded as more serious, more artistic—and the province of white musicians. Decoding the racial discourses that have distorted standard histories of rock music, Jack Hamilton underscores how ideas of “authenticity” have blinded us to rock’s inextricably interracial artistic enterprise. According to the standard storyline, the authentic white musician was guided by an individual creative vision, whereas black musicians were deemed authentic only when they stayed true to black tradition. Serious rock became white because only white musicians could be original without being accused of betraying their race. Juxtaposing Sam Cooke and Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, and many others, Hamilton challenges the racial categories that oversimplified the sixties revolution and provides a deeper appreciation of the twists and turns that kept the music alive.