A dazzling exploration of American culture—from high pop to highbrow—by acclaimed music authority, cultural historian, and biographer Anthony Heilbut, author of the now classic The Gospel Sound (“Definitive” —Rolling Stone), Exiled in Paradise, and Thomas Mann (“Electric”—Harold Brodkey).In The Fan Who Knew Too Much, Heilbut writes about art and obsession, from country blues singers and male sopranos to European intellectuals and the ori...

Exiled In Paradise: German Refugee Artists and Intellectuals in America from the 1930s to the Present by Anthony Heilbut (Second, 1997 revised edition; 173,000 words)The fascinating story of émigré intellectuals, writers, artists, scientists, movie directors, and scholars — including Bertolt Brecht, Theodor Adorno, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Thomas Mann, Arnold Schoenberg, George Grosz, Erik Erikson, Billy Wilder and Fritz Lang — who fled Nazi Germany and chan...

The untold story of 2018 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Sister Rosetta Tharpe, America’s first rock guitar divaLong before “women in rock” became a media catchphrase, African American guitar virtuoso Rosetta Tharpe proved in spectacular fashion that women could rock. Born in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, in 1915, Tharpe was gospel’s first superstar and the preeminent crossover figure of its golden age (1945–1965).Shout, Sister, Shout! is the first b...