Serpents in the Garden. That's how Percy Shelley described the revolutionary quest of his circle of Romantic poets and writers. And it's a perfect title for this marvelous a cappella of writing on art, music, culture, and sex from the editors and writers of CounterPunch, the radical newsletter and hugely popular website.
A big part of being radical in the best sense of that word lies in enjoying, promoting, and defending art and the spirit of freedom, along with the craft skills embodied by the arts. By the quality of life, art, and freedom that radicals commend, so will radicalism prevail. Subversive perspectives on life and politics should be fun.
Herein, sex therapist Dr. Susan Block diagnoses John Ashcroft's breast fetish; Marsha Cusic gets to the absolute heart of Motown, on the line. Daniel Wolff charts how the great Sam Cooke became so great; Lenni Brenner eats peyote with a young Bob Dylan in the Village, and Bruce Jackson unearths stage tapes proving that the crowd didn't boo Dylan when he went electric at Newport; Vicente Navarro exposes the fascist life of Salvador Dali; St. Clair explains why Ken Burns hates music, while Cockburn explores Angelina Jolie's links to the French Revolution; Peter Linebaugh recounts the wonderful history of May Day; and Susan Davis tours the inner vaults of the Kinsey Institute, the luscious warehouse of erotica hidden in the American heartland. Plus, an honor roll of CounterPunch's 100 greatest books of the 20th century! Not to mention a dozen more essays from Cockburn and St. Clair, Dave Marsh, Vanessa Jones, Ron Jacobs, Steve Perry, Ben Sonnenberg, David Vest, Joann Wypijewski, and a whole lot more.