A Cultural History of the American Underground.
Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Jackson Pollock, Jack Kerouac, William S Burroughs, Dean and Brando, Nico and Dylan, Jazz, Beat, Method - Cool.
The idea of "cool" is the most pervasive in modern culture - but where does it come from? Who invented it? What does it mean?
Stunningly illustrated and beautifully written, this book shows how this attitude now at the centre of the mainstream, was born in the American postwar avant-garde, in Harlem's after-hours joints and the cold water flats of the Lower East Side.
Concentrating on the years 1948 to 1965, poet Lewis MacAdams takes us inside the most influential and experimental arts movement of the twentieth century - from the jazz clubs where Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker invented bebop to Jackson Pollock's studio; from Williams S Burrough's frenetic experiments on the road to the Black Mountain School of Zen - and charts the fluctuating meanings of this simple, elusive, enduring word.
