How San Francisco became America's capital of sexual libertinism and a potent symbol in its culture wars

Authoritatively written and including rare photography and memorabilia, this stunningly illustrated book explores every aspect of Prince’s most iconic album and film, Purple Rain. In 1984, Prince, along with his band, The Revolution, released what would become his best-selling album and a touchstone of 1980s pop culture. Purple Rain has gone on to sell 25 million copies and counting. In Prince and Purple Rain, Andrea Swensson, a Minneapolis-based journalist and host/co-producer of The Official Prince Podcast, takes a deep dive into the legendary musician’s most famous album on its 40th anniversary. Chapters cover: Prince’s youth and early music career in Minneapolis, as well as each of the five studio albums that preceded Purple Rain Prince’s backing band, The Revolution, and the backgrounds of each of its individual members, with an emphasis on the Purple Rain studio and touring members: keyboardist Bobby Z., bassist Brown Mark, guitarist Wendy Melvoin, keyboardist Lisa Coleman, keyboardist Matt Fink, and vocalist Apollonia Track-by-track analyses of each side A look at the groundbreaking film of the same name and its multiplatinum soundtrack Awards, accolades, and critical reception Prince’s legacy post–Purple Rain, up to his untimely death in 2016 Illustrated with performance and off-stage photography as well as memorabilia from top collectors, Prince and Purple Rain is an inspiring tribute to a legendary album from a legendary performer and artist.

Featuring insights on even more groundbreaking recording sessions, rehearsals, and sound checks, the expanded edition of Duane Tudahl's award-winning book pulls back the paisley curtain to reveal the untold story of Prince’s rise from cult favorite to the biggest rock star on the planet. His journey is meticulously documented through detailed accounts of his time secluded behind the doors of the recording studio as well as his days on tour. With unprecedented access to the musicians, singers, and studio engineers who knew Prince best, including members of the Revolution and the Time, Duane Tudahl weaves an intimate saga of an eccentric genius and the people and events who helped shape the groundbreaking music he created. From Sunset Sound Studios’ daily recording logs and the Warner Bros. vault of information, Tudahl uncovers hidden truths about the origins of songs such as “Purple Rain,” “When Doves Cry,” and “Raspberry Beret” and also reveals never-before-published details about Prince’s unreleased outtakes. This definitive chronicle of Prince’s creative brilliance during 1983 and 1984 provides a new experience of the Purple Rain album as an integral part of Prince’s life and the lives of those closest to him.

"Reading this book revives the spirit of civic action today for those who are unjustifiably forlorn about overcoming injustice."—Ralph Nader An on-the-ground history of ordinary Americans who took to the streets when political issues became personal The 1960s are widely seen as the high tide of political activism in the United States. According to this view, Americans retreated to the private realm after the tumult of the civil rights and antiwar movements, and on the rare occasions when they did take action, it was mainly to express their wish to be left alone by government—as recommended by Ronald Reagan and the ascendant New Right. In fact, as Michael Stewart Foley shows in Front Porch Politics, this understanding of post-1960s politics needs drastic revision. On the community level, the 1970s and 1980s witnessed an unprecedented upsurge of innovative and impassioned grass roots political activity. In Southern California and on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, tenants challenged landlords with sit-ins and referenda; in the upper Midwest, farmers vandalized power lines and mobilized tractors to protect their land; and in the deindustrializing cities of the Rust Belt, laid-off workers boldly claimed the right to own their idled factories. Meanwhile, activists fought to defend the traditional family or to expand the rights of women, while entire towns organized to protest the toxic sludge in their basements. Recalling Love Canal, the tax revolt in California, ACT UP, and other crusades famous or forgotten, Foley shows how Americans were propelled by personal experiences and emotions into the public sphere. Disregarding conventional ideas of left and right, they turned to political action when they perceived, from their actual or figurative front porches, an immediate threat to their families, homes, or dreams. Front Porch Politics is a vivid and authoritative people's history of a time when Americans followed their outrage into the streets. Addressing today's readers, it is also a field guide for effective activism in an era when mass movements may seem impractical or even passé. The distinctively visceral, local, and highly personal politics that Americans practiced in the 1970s and 1980s provide a model of citizenship participation worth emulating if we are to renew our democracy.

The seventies witnessed economic decline in America, coupled with a series of foreign policy failures, events that created an air of unease and uncertainty. This volume examines the ways in which Americans responded to a changing world and sought to redefine themselves.

The brilliant but turbulent life of a public intellectual who transformed the social sciences Robert Bellah (1927–2013) was one of the most influential social scientists of the twentieth century. Trained as a sociologist, he crossed disciplinary boundaries in pursuit of a greater comprehension of religion as both a cultural phenomenon and a way to fathom the depths of the human condition. A Joyfully Serious Man is the definitive biography of this towering figure in modern intellectual life, and a revelatory portrait of a man who led an adventurous yet turbulent life. Drawing on Bellah's personal papers as well as in-depth interviews with those who knew him, Matteo Bortolini tells the story of an extraordinary scholarly career and an eventful and tempestuous life. He describes Bellah's exile from the United States during the hysteria of the McCarthy years, his crushing personal tragedies, and his experiments with sexuality. Bellah understood religion as a mysterious human institution that brings together the scattered pieces of individual and collective experiences. Bortolini shows how Bellah championed intellectual openness and innovation through his relentless opposition to any notion of secularization as a decline of religion and his ideas about the enduring tensions between individualism and community in American society. Based on nearly two decades of research, A Joyfully Serious Man is a revelatory chronicle of a leading public intellectual who was both a transformative thinker and a restless, passionate seeker.