Dancing in the Streets - by Barbara Ehrenreich (Paperback)
Similar Products
Products of same category from the store
All
Product info
<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>From a bestselling social commentator and cultural historian comes a fascinating exploration of one of humanity's oldest traditions: the celebration of communal joy expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing.<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><p><b>From the bestselling social commentator and cultural historian comes Barbara Ehrenreich's fascinating exploration of one of humanity's oldest traditions: the celebration of communal joy</b> <p/>In the acclaimed <i>Blood Rites</i>, Barbara Ehrenreich delved into the origins of our species' attraction to war. Here, she explores the opposite impulse, one that has been so effectively suppressed that we lack even a term for it: the desire for collective joy, historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing. <p/>Ehrenreich uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture. Although sixteenth-century Europeans viewed mass festivities as foreign and savage, Ehrenreich shows that they were indigenous to the West, from the ancient Greeks' worship of Dionysus to the medieval practice of Christianity as a danced religion. Ultimately, church officials drove the festivities into the streets, the prelude to widespread reformation: Protestants criminalized carnival, Wahhabist Muslims battled ecstatic Sufism, European colonizers wiped out native dance rites. The elites' fear that such gatherings would undermine social hierarchies was justified: the festive tradition inspired French revolutionary crowds and uprisings from the Caribbean to the American plains. Yet outbreaks of group revelry persist, as Ehrenreich shows, pointing to the 1960s rock-and-roll rebellion and the more recent carnivalization of sports. <p/>Original, exhilarating, and deeply optimistic, <i>Dancing in the Streets</i> concludes that we are innately social beings, impelled to share our joy and therefore able to envision, even create, a more peaceable future. <p/> <b>Fascinating . . . An admirably lucid, level-headed history of outbreaks of joy from Dionysus to the Grateful Dead.--Terry Eagleton, <i>The Nation</i></b></p><p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br><p>"A fabulous book on carnival and ecstasy, skillfully arranged and brilliantly explained." --Robert Farris Thompson, author of Tango: The Art History of Love <p/>"Barbara Ehrenreich shows how and why people celebrate together, and equally what causes us to fear celebration. Here is the other side of ritual, whose dark side she explored in <i>Blood Rites</i>. She ranges in time from the earliest festivals drawn on cave walls to modern football crowds; she finds that festivities and ecstatic rituals have been a way to address personal ills like melancholy and shame, social ills as extreme as those faced by American slaves. <i>Dancing in the Streets</i> is itself a celebration of language -- clear, funny, unpredictable. This is a truly original book." --Richard Sennett, author of The Culture of the New Capitalism</p><br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br><p><b>Barbara Ehrenreich</b> is the bestselling author of <i>Nickel and Dimed, Bait and Switch, Bright-sided, This Land Is Their Land</i>, and <i>Blood Rites</i>, among others. A frequent contributor to <i>Harper's</i> and <i>The Nation</i>, she has also been a columnist at <i>The New York Times</i> and <i>Time</i> magazine. She is the winner of the <i>L.A. Times</i> Book Prize for Current Interest and ALA Notable Books for Nonfiction. <p/>Ehrenreich was born in Butte, Montana, when it was still a bustling mining town. She studied physics at Reed College, and earned a Ph.D. in cell biology from Rockefeller University. Rather than going into laboratory work, she got involved in activism, and soon devoted herself to writing her innovative journalism. She lives and works in Florida.</p>
Price History
Cheapest price in the interval: 16.59 on November 6, 2021
Most expensive price in the interval: 16.59 on February 4, 2022
Price Archive shows prices from various stores, lets you see history and find the cheapest. There is no actual sale on the website. For all support, inquiry and suggestion messagescommunication@pricearchive.us