{"title":"Jeffrey Melnick","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"creepy-crawling-book-jeffrey-melnick-9781628728934","title":"Creepy Crawling","description":"Creepy crawling was the Manson Family's practice of secretly entering someone's home and, without harming anyone, leaving only a trace of evidence that they had been there, some reminder that the sanctity of the private home had been breached. Now, author Jeffrey Melnick reveals just how much the Family creepy crawled their way through Los Angeles in the sixties and then on through American social, political, and cultural life for close to fifty years, firmly lodging themselves in our minds. Even now, it is almost impossible to discuss the sixties, teenage runaways, sexuality, drugs, music, California, and even the concept of family without referencing Manson and his girls. Not just another history of Charles Manson, Creepy Crawling explores how the Family weren't so much outsiders but emblematic of the Los Angeles counterculture freak scene, and how Manson worked to connect himself to the mainstream of the time. Ever since they spent two nights killing seven residents of Los Angeles--what we now know as the Tate-LaBianca murders--the Manson family has rarely slipped from the American radar for long. From Emma Cline's The Girls to the recent TV show Aquarius, the family continues to find an audience. What is it about Charles Manson and his family that captivates us still? Author Jeffrey Melnick sets out to answer this question in this fascinating and compulsively readable cultural history of the Family and their influence from 1969 to the November 2017 death in prison of Charles Manson, himself, and beyond.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49513223880977,"sku":"CIN1628728930G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50205197697297,"sku":"CIN1628728930A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50312167686417,"sku":"CIN1628728930VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50953065464081,"sku":"GOR009683698","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1628728930.jpg?v=1750863041"},{"product_id":"black-jewish-relations-on-trial-book-jeffrey-melnick-9781578062874","title":"Black-Jewish Relations on Trial","description":"An analysis of the Leo Frank case as a measure of the complexities characterizing the relationship between African Americans and Jews in America  In 1915 Leo Frank, a Northern Jew, was lynched in Georgia. He had been convicted of the murder of Mary Phagan, a young white woman who worked in the Atlanta pencil factory managed by Frank. In a tumultuous trial in 1913 Frank's main accuser was Jim Conley, an African American employee in the factory. Was Frank guilty? In our time a martyr's aura falls over Frank as a victim of religious and regional bigotry. The unending controversy has inspired debates, movies, books, songs, and theatrical productions. Among the creative works focused on the case are a ballad by Fiddlin' John Carson, David Mamet's novel The Old Religion in 1997, and Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown's musical Parade in 1998. Indeed, the Frank case has become a touchstone in the history of black-Jewish cultural relations. How- ever, for too long the trial has been oversimplified as the moment when Jews recognized their vulnerability in America and began to make common cause with African Americans. This study has a different tale to tell. It casts off old political and cultural baggage in order to assess the cultural context of Frank's trial, and to examine the stress placed on the relationship of African Americans and Jews by it. The interpretation offered here is based on deep archival research, analyses of the court records, and study of various artistic creations inspired by the case. It suggests that the case should be understood as providing conclusive early evidence of the deep mutual distrust between African Americans and Jews, a distrust that has been skillfully and cynically manipulated by powerful white people. Black-Jewish Relations on Trial is concerned less with what actually happened in the National Pencil Company factory than with how Frank's trial, conviction, and lynching have been used as an occasion to explore black-Jewish relations and the New South. Just as with the O. J. Simpson trial, the Frank trial requires that Americans make a profound examination of their essential beliefs about race, sexuality, and power.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50004946911505,"sku":"CIN157806287XA","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52688666722577,"sku":"NLS9781578062874","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/157806287X.jpg?v=1762597395"},{"product_id":"9-11-culture-book-jeffrey-melnick-9781405173711","title":"9\/11 Culture","description":"9\/11 Culture serves as a timely and accessible introduction to the complexities of American culture in the wake of the 9\/11 attacks.    Gives balanced examinations of a broad catalogue of artifacts from film, music, photography, literary fiction, and other popular arts  Investigates the ways that 9\/11 has exerted a shaping force on a wide range of practices, from the politics of femininity to the poetics of redemption  Includes pedagogical material to assist understanding and teaching, including film and discographies, and a useful teachers' preface","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50130985845009,"sku":"CIN1405173718G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50309924618513,"sku":"CIN1405173718VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52331213848849,"sku":"NLS9781405173711","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1405173718.jpg?v=1750755000"},{"product_id":"right-to-sing-the-blues-book-jeffrey-melnick-9780674769762","title":"A Right to Sing the Blues","description":"All too often an incident or accident thrusts Black-Jewish relations into the news. Discussion follows, but little in the way of progress or enlightenment results - and this is how things will remain until thoughts about African American-Jewish relations are revised. This is just such a revision.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50329209667857,"sku":"CIN0674769767G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0674769767.jpg?v=1750912068"},{"product_id":"right-to-sing-the-blues-book-jeffrey-melnick-9780674005662","title":"A Right to Sing the Blues","description":"All too often an incident or accident, such as the eruption in Crown Heights with its legacy of bitterness and recrimination, thrusts Black–Jewish relations into the news. A volley of discussion follows, but little in the way of progress or enlightenment results—and this is how things will remain until we radically revise the way we think about the complex interactions between African Americans and Jews. A Right to Sing the Blues offers just such a revision.  “Black–Jewish relations,” Jeffrey Melnick argues, has mostly been a way for American Jews to talk about their ambivalent racial status, a narrative collectively constructed at critical moments, when particular conflicts demand an explanation. Remarkably flexible, this narrative can organize diffuse materials into a coherent story that has a powerful hold on our imagination. Melnick elaborates this idea through an in-depth look at Jewish songwriters, composers, and performers who made “Black” music in the first few decades of this century. He shows how Jews such as George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Al Jolson, and others were able to portray their “natural” affinity for producing “Black” music as a product of their Jewishness while simultaneously depicting Jewishness as a stable white identity. Melnick also contends that this cultural activity competed directly with Harlem Renaissance attempts to define Blackness.  Moving beyond the narrow focus of advocacy group politics, this book complicates and enriches our understanding of the cultural terrain shared by African Americans and Jews.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50360788451601,"sku":"CIN067400566XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51325790191889,"sku":"CIN067400566XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/067400566X.jpg?v=1779183970"},{"product_id":"charles-manson-s-creepy-crawl-book-jeffrey-melnick-9781948924764","title":"Charles Manson's Creepy Crawl","description":"\u003cb\u003e50 years after the notorious Tate-LaBianca murders, Charles Manson and the Manson Family continue to haunt and fascinate America. No crime or criminal has touched the social, political, or cultural life of America in the same way.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eCreepy crawling was the Manson Family's practice of secretly entering someone's home, and without harming anyone, leaving only a trace of evidence that they had been there, some reminder that the sanctity of the private home had been breached. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eNow, author Jeffrey Melnick reveals just how much the Family creepy crawled their way through Los Angeles in the sixties and then on through American social, political, and cultural life for fifty years, firmly lodging themselves in our minds. Even now, it is almost impossible to discuss the sixties, teenage runaways, sexuality, drugs, music, California, or even the concept of family without referencing Manson and his girls. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eNot another Charles Manson history, \u003ci\u003eCharles Manson's Creepy Crawl\u003c\/i\u003e explores how the Family weren't so much outsiders as emblematic of the Los Angeles counterculture freak scene, and how Manson worked to connect himself to the mainstream of the time. Ever since they spent two nights killing seven residents of Los Angeles--what we now know as the Tate-LaBianca murders--the Manson family has rarely slipped from the American radar for long. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFrom Emma Cline's \u003ci\u003eThe Girls\u003c\/i\u003e to the TV show \u003ci\u003eAquarius\u003c\/i\u003e, as well as two major films in 2019, including Quentin Tarantino's \u003ci\u003eOnce Upon a Time in Hollywood\u003c\/i\u003e, the family continues to rivet America. What is it about Charles Manson and his family that captivates us still? \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAuthor Jeffrey Melnick sets out to answer this question in this fascinating and compulsively readable cultural history of the Family and their influence from 1969 to the present. Previously published in hardcover under the title Creepy Crawling this paperback edition has a new epilogue.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50854422216977,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50854423298321,"sku":"CIN1948924765VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51713561821457,"sku":"CIN1948924765G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1948924765.jpg?v=1751219200"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-au\/collections\/author-books-by-jeffrey-melnick.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}