Examines the ways sound recording has changed the nature of music, discusses the influence of music on human behavior, and tells the stories of musicians and composers who have made sound recording an art form

The Recording Angel: Explorations in Phonography

Eisenberg, Evan

Humor & Entertainment

McGraw=Hill

First published in 1987 and now considered a classic, The Recording Angel charts the ways in which the phonograph and its cousins have transformed our culture. In a new Afterword, Evan Eisenberg shows how digital technology, file trading, and other recent developments are accelerating―or reversing―these trends. Influential and provocative, The Recording Angel is required reading for anyone who cares about the effect recording has had―and will have―on our experience of music.

The Recording Angel: Music, Records and Culture from Aristotle to Zappa

Computers & Technology

Yale University Press

London: Picador, 1998. 1st Edition, Hardbound, about 9.5 inches tall, 612 pages. Notes, bibliography, index. "An astonishing, visionary reading of the story of Eden. This unfurls the history of the relationship of the human and the natural, Eisenberg explores the ways in which nature has been remade, from the biological waves of change before man's arrival, to the mythos, stories, architecture and scientific discoveries we have used to make sense of our baffled position on the edge."

Ecology of Eden, The

Science & Math

Biological Sciences

MacMillan General Books

"Dazzling . . . a prose epic." --The Washington Post A mountain peak, a rolling pasture, a boulevard alive with sound and light--each of us carries, deep inside, a dream of paradise. In this magisterial contribution to the literature of ecology and the environment, our nostalgia for the myth of paradise--the primeval, self-sufficient, nurturing garden where mankind was born--is the starting point of a brilliant inquiry into what our place in Nature has been and ought to be. Writing in lively, imaginative prose and drawing deftly upon disciplines as varied as biology, geology, anthropology, history, physics, and music, Evan Eisenberg examines the ways in which people have envisioned and tried to re-create the earthly paradise even as they have dealt with the often disastrous effects of their increasing manipulation of the environment. An encyclopedic survey of efforts to heal the dangerous rift between culture and nature, The Ecology of Eden is a landmark work that is enormously suggestive, informative, and a joy to read. "It's a question many writers have tackled, from Paul Ehrlich to E. O. Wilson: How can we survive while population grows, resources dwindle . . . and the threat of global climate change looms ominously? Few have explored it with more originality or historic sweep. . . . A rich harvest, filled with many kernels of wisdom about the future of our elusive Eden." --San Francisco Chronicle "An ambitious, thickly braided narrative that makes the clearest bid to nudge the dialectic along. . . . Eisenberg traces the story engagingly, energetically, with a remarkable breadth of learning and a metaphor-maker's eye. . . . A vision of substance and genuine insight." -Los Angeles Times Book Review

The Ecology of Eden: An Inquiry into the Dream of Paradise and a New Vision of Our Role in Nature

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

The Ecology Of Eden

Random House Canada

For thousands of years, we have dreamed of going back to a time, to a place--Eden, Arcadia, the Golden Age--to a paradise that we ourselves have never known. The Ecology of Eden is at once an inquiry into this dream and a startling new vision of humankind's role in nature. Images of paradise arise from the down-to-earth facts of our lives--of our relationship with land, water, air, other creatures, and other people. In turn, these images of paradise reshape our lives. Tracing this interplay, Eisenberg recasts Western history as a tragicomedy whose heroes--Gilgamesh and Henry Ford, Virgil and Louis XIV, Lorenzo the Magnificent and Frank Lloyd Wright--struggle to regain a paradise lost. With elegance and refreshing wit, he shows how dreams of an earthly paradise both reflect and disguise our actual dealings with nature. He illustrates, too, the shifting nature of nature itself: how alliances of species--most recently, alliances led by humankind--have continually remade the planet. Ranging gracefully from myth to molecular biology, from the Bible to urban studies, from garden lore to evolution, Eisenberg explores the actual circumstances of our exile from Eden. The Ecology of Eden sheds a bold new light on present-day environmental problems, showing how we can make peace with our exile not by going back but by looking forward: by learning from nature itself--with, perhaps, some help from Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker--how humans and nature can make tough, supple music together. The profundity of this book's vision is made vivid by the richness of its scholarship, the surprise of its associations, the authority of its engaging voice. Weaving humor with urgency, compassion with insight, Eisenberg succeeds in the rarest of achievements: allowing us to see the world with fresh eyes.

The Ecology of Eden

KNOPF

Vintage Canada

The late poet Reginald Shepherd corresponded for two years before his death with nature writer  Alan Contreras.  Song After All offers a new window into Shepherd’s thoughts on writing, music, love and, ultimately, dealing with cancer. Wry, funny, painful, illuminating and glorious, this unique compilation of 120 personal messages, plus blog posts, poetic commentary and essays is a moving and entertaining memorial.  Also contains essays by Shepherd's partner Robert Philen and by Evan Eisenberg, and includes the complete text of Fernando Pessoa's poem Antinous, written in English in 1918 and rarely published in the U.S.  All royalties from sales of this book benefit the Creative Writing program at the University of Oregon, where Shepherd was scheduled to speak shortly before he died.

Song After All: The Letters of Reginald Shepherd and Alan Contreras

Literature & Fiction

PESSOA, FERNANDO

Shepherd, Reginald

Contreras, Alan L.

Philen, Robert

Essays & Correspondence

CraneDance Publications

A satire for our demented times, following the arc of Donald Trump's career as it bends toward injustice, hits it, and then sinks still lower.
Few politicians in history have deserved lampooning as richly as Donald Trump. And few have gotten their just deserts served up as deliciously as they are in The Trumpiad, a work perceptively characterized by Stuart Klawans as “a true epic about a mock President.” In their caustic, uproarious Trumpiad, poet Evan Eisenberg and artist Steve Brodner present a satire in verse for our demented times. Inspired by Swift, Byron, and Ogden Nash as much as by John Oliver and Stephen Colbert, Eisenberg sets the stage (“Muse, you're fired”) and then traces our hero from the murk of his ancestry in the form of his grandfather Friedrich (an enterprising immigrant who ran a bordello) to the latest presidential high crimes and misadventures.
Using a rakish, endlessly flexible five-line stanza he calls the Emilick―the love child of Emily Dickinson and Edward Lear― Eisenberg follows the arc of Trump's career as it bends toward injustice, hits it, and then sinks still lower. Brodner matches the poet punch for punch, in the spirit of such great satiric artists as Hogarth, Goya, and Daumier.
About the illustrator:
A regular contributor to the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, the New York Times, Harper's, Esquire, Playboy, Mother Jones, the Nation, and the Los Angeles Times, Steve Brodner has been hailed by Lewis Lapham as “a born arsonist” and by Edward Sorel as “incomparable…the best caricaturist around.” Widely credited with spearheading the revival of drawn satire over the past four decades, Brodner is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Hamilton King Award and the Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism.
 This is the ballad of Donald Trump,
 A tale of greed and gall;
A tragedy birthed before our eyes―
A man, his money, his mouth, his rise
 And if there's a God, his fall.
―The Trumpiad

The Trumpiad (Terra Nova Press)

Dramas & Plays

Terra Nova Press

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