A spirited and intimate look at American icon and activist Pete Seeger. Throughout his life, Pete Seeger transformed a classic American musical style into a form of peaceful protest against war, segregation, and nuclear weapons. Drawing on his extensive talks with Seeger, Alec Wilkinson delivers a first hand look at Seeger's unique blend of independence and commitment, charm, courage, energy, and belief in human equality and American democracy. We see Seeger as a child, instilled with a love of music by his parents; as a teenager, hearing real folk music for the first time; as a young adult, singing with Woody Guthrie. And finally, Seeger the man marching with the Rev. Martin Luther King in Selma, standing up to McCarthyism, and fighting for his beloved Hudson River. The gigantic life captured in this slender volume is truly an American anthem.

The Rough Guide to World Musicwas published for the first time in 1994 and became the definitive reference. Six years on, the subject has become too big for one book- hence this new two-volume edition. World Music 2- Latin and North America, Caribbean, India, Asia and Pacifichas full coverage of everything from salsa and merengue to qawwali and gamelan, and biographies of artists from Juan Luis Guerra to The Klezmatics to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Features include more than 80 articles from expert contributors, focusing on the popular and roots music to be seen and heard, both live and on disc, and extensive discographies for each country, with biography-notes on nearly 2000 musicians and reviews of their best available CDs. It includes photos and album cover illustrations which have been gathered from contemporary and archive sources, many of them unique to this book, and directories of World Music labels, specialist stores around the world and on the internet.