A true icon of American popular culture, songwriter and entertainer Bob Dylan was a catalyst for changing social currents in the 1960s. His songs of the 60s, such as "Blowin' in the Wind," immediately conjure up an era even for those too young to have witnessed it. Although he often shuns the public eye and has dropped out of sight for long periods in his career, Dylan continues to write and perform and remains influential on the popular music scene. Unswerving in his antiwar stance, he shocked audiences of the February 1991 Grammy Awards ceremony, at which he was honored with a lifetime achievement award, by singing his "Masters of War" during "Operation Desert Storm." Elusive to biographers, Dylan has inspired relatively few substantive accounts, although much has been written about his music. The present study presents an accurate summary of his life and an analysis of his pivotal role in popular music. His more than 400 songs and other writings, recordings, concert tours, and film and television appearances are all fully documented, as are bootleg recordings and recordings of his music by other singers. Presented in a lively manner with much anecdotal material, the facts and the myths about Dylan and the strengths and weaknesses of writings about him are carefully assessed in this one-volume source on the man and his work.
For Hemingway and Fitzgerald, there was Paris in the twenties. Later generations had Big Sur, Greenwich Village and Woodstock.
But in the Seventies, there was Key West. That was where a generation of artists -- Thomas McGuane, Jim Harrison, Jimmy Buffett, Hunter Thompson and others -- found their style and artistic voice.
In Mile Marker Zero (Crown, 2011) William McKeen tells the story of these remarkable artists and how this two-by-four island at the end of the road shaped their lives. For hundreds of years, pirates and poets and pot smugglers and painters have called the wacky little town home. Here are the stories of a generation that nearly went crazy from the heat. Grab your margarita and lock up your children.
McKeen is the author of Outlaw Journalist (W.W. Norton, 2008), Highway 61 (W.W. Norton, 2003), Rock and Roll is Here to Stay (W.W. Norton, 2000) and several other books about American music and popular culture.
He's also completed an anthology of stories about growing up in Florida called Homegrown (University Press of Florida, 2012).
He teaches at Boston University and chairs its journalism department. He was a newspaper reporter and magazine editor before beginning his teaching career.
He is a father of seven children and lives with his wife Nicole, a magazine editor, on the rocky coast of Cohasset, Massachusetts.
Please visit www.williammckeen.com
