Review
"Engrossing…Hot Stuff is not just about disco; it re-examines the ‘70s as a decade of revolution."
― James Gavin, The New York Times Book Review
"Echols aims for―and thoroughly achieves―a range of higher cultural insights. . . . Using encyclopedic knowledge of the eras’ biggest stars, she shows how all sorts of musical disco styles played a ‘central role’ in broadening the contours of ‘blackness, femininity, and male homosexuality’ in America. . . . Revelatory."
― Publishers Weekly
"In this expertly rendered, wide-ranging history of one of pop's most exciting social and musical movements, Alice Echols thoroughly recovers the moment in which disco was born and flowered―a moment of liberation for women, gay men, and not a few straight boys; of rich experimentation in the studio and behind the DJ decks; and of joyful dancing that broke down all kinds of boundaries. Echols, one of our best chroniclers of how pop creates social change (and is, in turn, inspired by it), gets its vibe because she lived it―and because she can step back from it now and see it whole."
― Ann Powers, The Los Angeles Times
"A clear-eyed encapsulation of what made this seemingly facile music so complex, compelling, and prescient… It all adds up to a thumping good read."
― Atlantic Monthly
"Thoroughly researched, scholarly credible and fiercely entertaining… [Hot Stuff] pulsates with a style as relentless as the music it analyzes and the personalities who brought that sound to the airwaves, clubs, boardrooms and bedrooms."
― Warren Pederson, San Francisco Chronicle
"Exhilarating, perceptive… an important work of cultural and musical resuscitation, written with a scholar’s acumen but a fan’s ardor."
― Melissa Anderson, Newsday
"Quietly dazzling."
― Peter Terzian, Los Angeles Times
"[Hot Stuff] reveals several unturned stones in the disco discourse, and presents an alternate account of those hazy-crazy yesteryears that’s ultimately indispensable."
― Smith Galtney, Time Out New York
"Persuasively argued… [a] stimulating rethinking of well-trod terrain."
― Bookforum, Michaelangelo Matos
"Thoroughly entertaining."
― Thomas Rogers, Salon
"Echols' love of music, her acumen about popular culture, and her gifts as a leading cultural historian come together in this remarkable book. The book is fascinating, carried along by prose that is as sleek and slinky as its subject."
― Christine Stansell, Stein-Freiler Distinguished Service Professor, The University of Chicago
"[A]n intriguing critical study of the complex relationships and the nontraditional development of the genre. A definite purchase for…pop-music enthusiasts."
― Library Journal
From the Back Cover
“Echols’s love of music, her acumen about popular culture, and her gifts as a leading cultural historian come together in this remarkable book. The book is fascinating, carried along by prose that is as sleek and slinky as its subject.”―Christine Stansell, author of American Moderns
“Hot Stuff describes the book as well as its subject: a thoughtful and sophisticated treatment of a significant but much-maligned music.”―Tim Taylor, professor, Departments of Ethnomusicology and Musicology, UCLA
“Echols aims for―and thoroughly achieves―a range of higher cultural insights. . . . Using encyclopedic knowledge of the eras’ biggest stars, she shows how all sorts of musical disco styles played a ‘central role’ in broadening the contours of ‘blackness, femininity, and male homosexuality’ in America. . . . Revelatory.”―Publishers Weekly
“Without question, Alice Echols is one of America’s best cultural critics working the beat between popular and academic cultures. With characteristic stylistic verve and scholarly acumen, Echols trolls the edges of our culture’s underbelly to discern its central place in politics and economics. In Hot Stuff, she finds disco to be crucial for understanding what happened in 1970s America. Thus invariably, Echols provides a surprising take on familiar scenes by pointing out potholes and pitfalls of late twentieth-century American culture, exploring regions of experience previously overlooked or discounted. Her deep immersion in the subjects of her research, thorough oral histories, and extensive archival investigation flesh out her absolutely original critical insights.”―Paula Rabinowitz, author of Black & White & Noir
About the Author
Alice Echols is Barbra Streisand Professor of contemporary gender studies and professor of history at the University of Southern California. A former disco deejay, she is the author of four books including Hot Stuff and the acclaimed biography of Janis Joplin, Scars of Sweet Paradise.
![Johnny Morgan, Gloria Gaynor'sDisco: The Music, The Times, The Era [Hardcover]2011](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51RbdM+El7L._AC_UL160_SR160,160_.jpg)
