The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce,
Culture, and Coolness
By Steven Levy
(Simon & Schuster, $25)
Let me say it up front: I do not own an iPod. I do not even own a cell phone. (My adult children and most of my friends own both, so I am not totally in the dark.) Yet I found Steven Levy’s reporting about the invention, sales, and impact of the iPod enthralling. He makes a big deal about an aspect of the iPod that is absent from much of the coverage — its ability to shuffle the songs loaded into it so that they play in sometimes surprising sequences. Levy became so enamored of the shuffling concept that he persuaded his editors at Simon & Schuster to publish the book with the chapters shuffled. The order of the chapters in the book I just finished reading might be different than the order of the chapters in your copy of The Perfect Thing. After an opening chapter entitled “Perfect,” which will be placed first in every printed copy, Levy covers, in eight shuffled chapters, the origin of the iPod, the backgrounds of Apple and its guiding executive Steve Jobs, how the iPod came to be viewed as a sign of coolness, and what it means for social interaction that each iPod is such a personal (and, as such, an isolating) device. Still, hasn’t there been enough written about Apple’s omnipresent gadget already? Maybe, but that doesn’t stop The Perfect Thing from being a fascinating book. Given the author’s track record, that is no surprise. If Levy is not the best journalist writing about technology, he must be a close second. A staff writer at Newsweek, Levy has already informed countless readers about the impact of computer technology on society with previous books about hackers, manufacturers, and privacy conundrums. He scores again with The Perfect Thing. I might never listen to music through white earbuds, but I will almost certainly read Levy’s book again to absorb his brilliance as a societal commentator more thoroughly. — Steve Weinberg
The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s: A Secret History of Jewish Punk
By Steven Lee Beeber
(Chicago Review Press, $25)
Punk is Jewish. So begins Steven Lee Beeber’s insightful ethnocentric study of how punk rock, often wrongly viewed as a British-Protestant creation, was actually the work of Jews in America. By the mid-’70s, the first wave of punk bands had staked their territory at CBGB’s, a run-down dive on New York City’s Lower East Side. As Beeber writes in his intro: “In that no-man’s land between the old Yiddish theater district and the ground zero of the Jewish-American experience, they invented the punk sound that continues to be heard to this day.” This book shows how that sound cannot be separated from its makers’ Jewishness. In a meticulously researched effort, he goes on to profile the key figures in the music’s development: from cultural antecedents like comedian Lenny Bruce (born Leonard Alfred Schneider) to the decadent poetry of the Velvet Underground’s Lou Reed (originally Rabinowitz) to the formation of punk’s Jewish Beatles, the Ramones. In addition to spotlighting the roles of artists like Television’s Richard Hell, Blondie’s Chris Stein, and the Patti Smith Group’s Lenny Kaye, Beeber also shows how Jews working behind the scenes — people like manager Danny Fields, club owner Hilly Kristal, and record mogul Seymour Stein — all played a part in creating and defining punk’s zeitgeist. Beeber writes with both a charming wit and a powerful conviction in his theories, backing his conclusions with a deep understanding of historical context — for example, he shows how the flowering of the music in late-twentieth-century NYC actually had its roots as far back as the 1600s and the first wave of judío immigrants landing at what was then New Amsterdam. Beeber also traces how the effects of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, the vaudevillian tradition, and the cross-cultural mingling of Italians and Jews all came to have a profound impact in shaping punk. As both a musical and historical study, Heebie-Jeebies is a remarkably rich and rewarding read. — Bob Bozorgmehr
We’ve Got It Made in America: A Common Man’s Salute to an
Uncommon Country
By John Ratzenberger and Joel Engel
(Center Street, $24)
Despite the declaration in the book’s subtitle, Ratzenberger is not exactly a common man. He has appeared in Hollywood movies (he’s the only actor who’s voiced a character in every Pixar film), played postman Cliff Clavin on Cheers, and now is host of the Travel Channel’s John Ratzenberger’s Made in America. And yet his voice throughout We’ve Got It Made in America is that of a blue-collar guy reared in Bridgeport, Connecticut, who embodies the virtues that have made the United States first among nations. The book is a by-product of Ratzenberger’s current television program, which chronicles American factories that manufacture American products — some of them economic staples, some of them offbeat. His core philosophy sounds simplistic, even simpleminded: “Wake up in the morning, put your hand to something useful, and take care of yourself and your family,” Ratzenberger says. “It’s simple, it’s direct, and it works. And for more than a century, that’s how most people in this country lived.” Simple? Yes. Simpleminded? No. That’s why the text is quite likely to carry a strange fascination for readers, no matter what their personal politics happen to be. Just when Ratzenberger’s rants seem predictable, he changes direction to say something unexpected and even downright contradictory to the superpatriot persona he adopts most of the time. He is especially critical of major American corporations abandoning loyal employees by moving overseas solely for bottom-line considerations. Ratzenberger’s unpredictability coupled with a modicum of erudition drives readers to the final word of each chapter, much like a Wall Street Journal editorial compels even those it angers to read every sentence because the arguments are presented so skillfully. — S.W.
Across the Great Divide: The Band and America
By Barney Hoskyns
(Hal Leonard, $20)
With the release of last year’s exhaustive boxed set A Musical History and their continued influence on successive generations of artists, the Band’s reputation is ripe for reappraisal. Perfect timing, then, for an updated publication of British music critic Barney Hoskyns’s definitive 1993 bio of the group. An odd combination of four rural Canadians (guitarist/songwriter Robbie Robertson, bassist/vocalist Rick Danko, pianist/vocalist Richard Manuel, and multi-instrumental whiz Garth Hudson) and one dyed-in-the-wool Southerner, drummer/vocalist Levon Helm, the Band took the various strains of blues, country, and R&B and created an alternately joyful and haunting hybrid often dubbed “white soul.” From their early days supporting rockabilly wild man Ronnie Hawkins to backing Bob Dylan during his epochal electric tours of 1965 to 1966 to the release of their own masterpieces Music from Big Pink and The Band (Brown Album), the group quietly became one of the most influential outfits of all time. Although never a massive commercial success, the appearance of their late-’60s LPs sent shock waves through the rock world; then, at the height of outrageous acid-drenched excess, Cream’s Eric Clapton was moved to famously break up his group after hearing the Band, while George Harrison found respite from the bickering Beatles by jamming with the Band at their Woodstock digs. The group bowed out in fairly spectacular fashion with 1976’s star-studded The Last Waltz concert and documentary. Various reunions followed — some better than others, all sans Robertson — but Manuel’s suicide in 1986 and Danko’s death in 1999 finally put an end to things. The fight for the band’s legacy has continued to be a rancorous one. Helm, who wrote his own book, has consistently pegged Robertson as a credit-stealing diva — an accusation that isn’t entirely unfair. Hoskyns takes a more balanced view than Helm here, both of the Band’s rise and fall, creating a portrait of a group whose relatively minor fame never quite equaled their vast influence. — B.B.