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Please try your request again later. David Blum works for Amazon. Blum's first book, "Flash In The Pan: His second book, "Tick Are you an author? Help us improve our Author Pages by updating your bibliography and submitting a new or current image and biography. Learn more at Author Central. Popularity Popularity Featured Price: Low to High Price: High to Low Avg.

Flash in the Pan: Life and Death of an American Restaurant Mar 26, The video for the song showed a young Courteney Cox dancing on stage with Springsteen, which helped start the actress's career. The song " Cover Me " was written by Springsteen for Donna Summer , but his record company persuaded him to keep it for the new album. A big fan of Summer's work, Springsteen wrote another song for her, " Protection ".

Springsteen played on the " We Are the World " song and album in His live single "Trapped" from that album received moderate airplay on US Top 40 stations as well as reaching No. During the Born in the U. Tour , Springsteen met actress Julianne Phillips , whom he would marry in He later stated that he "simply did not realise how big the whole thing was going to be". He has since expressed regret at turning down Bob Geldof 's invitation, stating that he could have played a couple of acoustic songs had there been no slot available for a full band performance.

The Born in the U. It is one of the most commercially successful live albums of all time, ultimately selling 13 million units in the U. Despite its popularity, some fans and critics felt the album's song selection could have been better. Springsteen concerts are the subjects of frequent bootleg recording and trading among fans. During the s, several Springsteen fanzines were launched, including Backstreets magazine, which started in Seattle and continues today as a glossy publication, now in communication with Springsteen's management and official website.

After this commercial peak, Springsteen released the much more sedate and contemplative Tunnel of Love album , a mature reflection on the many faces of love found, lost and squandered, which only selectively used the E Street Band. It presaged the breakup of his marriage to Julianne Phillips and described some of his unhappiness in the relationship. Reflecting the challenges of love in " Brilliant Disguise ", Springsteen sang:. The subsequent Tunnel of Love Express Tour shook up fans with changes to the stage layout, favorites dropped from the set list, and horn-based arrangements.

During the European leg in , Springsteen's relationship with backup singer Patti Scialfa became public. Phillips and Springsteen filed for divorce in On July 19, , Springsteen held a concert in East Germany that attracted , spectators. Journalist Erik Kirschbaum has called the concert "the most important rock concert ever, anywhere", in his book Rocking the Wall. It had been conceived by the Socialist Unity Party 's youth wing in an attempt to placate the youth of East Germany, who were hungry for more freedom and the popular music of the West. However, it is Kirschbaum's opinion that the success of the concert catalyzed opposition to the regime in the DDR, and helped contribute to the fall of the Berlin Wall the following year.

Later in , Springsteen headlined the worldwide Human Rights Now! In late he dissolved the E Street Band, and he and Scialfa relocated to California, marrying in In , after risking fan accusations of "going Hollywood" by moving to Los Angeles and working with session musicians , Springsteen released two albums at once.

Human Touch and Lucky Town were even more introspective than any of his previous work and displayed a newly revealed confidence. As opposed to his first two albums, which dreamed of happiness, and his next four, which showed him growing to fear it, at points during the Lucky Town album, Springsteen actually claims happiness for himself. Springsteen seemed to realize this a few years hence when he spoke humorously of his late father during his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame acceptance speech:.

I've gotta thank him because—what would I conceivably have written about without him?

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I mean, you can imagine that if everything had gone great between us, we would have had disaster. I would have written just happy songs—and I tried it in the early '90s and it didn't work; the public didn't like it. A multiple Grammy Award winner, Springsteen also won an Academy Award in for his song " Streets of Philadelphia ", which appeared on the soundtrack to the film Philadelphia.

The video for the song shows Springsteen's actual vocal performance, recorded using a hidden microphone, to a prerecorded instrumental track. This technique was developed on the " Brilliant Disguise " video. This was generally less well-received than the similar Nebraska , due to the minimal melody , twangy vocals, and political nature of most of the songs, although some praised it for giving voice to immigrants and others who rarely have one in American culture.

The lengthy, worldwide, small-venue solo acoustic Ghost of Tom Joad Tour that followed successfully presented many of his older songs in drastically reshaped acoustic form, although Springsteen had to explicitly remind his audiences to be quiet and not to clap during the performances. It's part of your place in society, and in some way part of society's acceptance of you.

Following the tour, Springsteen moved back to New Jersey with his family. Later, he would acknowledge that the s were a "lost period" for him: Some people would say I didn't do my best work. Springsteen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in by Bono the lead singer of U2 , a favor he returned in Live in New York City. A new song, " American Skin 41 Shots ", about the police shooting of Amadou Diallo , which was played at these shows proved controversial.

In , Springsteen released his first studio effort with the full band in 18 years, The Rising , produced by Brendan O'Brien. The album, mostly a reflection on the September 11 attacks , was a critical and popular success. Many of the songs were influenced by phone conversations Springsteen had with family members of victims of the attacks who in their obituaries had mentioned how his music touched their lives.

The title track gained airplay in several radio formats, and the record became Springsteen's best-selling album of new material in 15 years. Kicked off by an early-morning Asbury Park appearance on The Today Show , The Rising Tour commenced, barnstorming through a series of single-night arena stands in the U.

While Springsteen had maintained a loyal hardcore fan base everywhere and particularly in Europe , his general popularity had dipped over the years in some southern and midwestern regions of the U. But it was still strong in Europe and along the U. The Rising Tour concluded with three nights in Shea Stadium , highlighted by renewed controversy over "American Skin" and a guest appearance by Bob Dylan.

During the early s, Springsteen became a visible advocate for the revitalization of Asbury Park, and played an annual series of winter holiday concerts there to benefit various local businesses, organizations, and causes. These shows were explicitly intended for the devoted fans, including numbers such as the E Street Shuffle outtake "Thundercrack", a rollicking group-participation song that would mystify casual Springsteen fans.

He also frequently rehearses for tours in Asbury Park; some of his most devoted followers even stand outside the building to hear what fragments they can of the upcoming shows. The song " My City of Ruins " was originally written about Asbury Park, in honor of the attempts to revitalize the city. Looking for an appropriate song for the America: A Tribute to Heroes telethon broadcast, he selected "My City of Ruins", which was immediately recognized as an emotional highlight of the broadcast, with its gospel themes and its heartfelt exhortations to "Rise up!

All concerts were to be held in swing states , to benefit the progressive political organization group America Coming Together and to encourage people to register and vote. A finale was held in Washington, D. Several days later, Springsteen held one more such concert in New Jersey, when polls showed that state surprisingly close. This new stance led to criticism and praise from the expected partisan sources. Springsteen's "No Surrender" became the main campaign theme song for John Kerry 's unsuccessful presidential campaign ; in the last days of the campaign, he performed acoustic versions of the song and some of his other old songs at Kerry rallies.

It is a low-key, mostly acoustic album, in the same vein as Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad although with a little more instrumentation. Some of the material was written almost 10 years earlier during, or shortly after, the Ghost of Tom Joad Tour, with a few having been performed then but not released. Starbucks rejected a co-branding deal for the album, due in part to some sexually explicit content but also because of Springsteen's anti-corporate politics.

The album entered the album charts at No. Attendance was disappointing in a few regions, and everywhere other than in Europe tickets were easier to get than in the past. Unlike his mids solo tour, he performed on piano, electric piano , pump organ , autoharp , ukulele , banjo , electric guitar, and stomping board, as well as acoustic guitar and harmonica, adding variety to the solo sound.

Offstage synthesizer, guitar, and percussion were also used for some songs. The Seeger Sessions , an American roots music project focused around a big folk sound treatment of 15 songs popularized by the radical musical activism of Pete Seeger. In contrast to previous albums, this was recorded in only three one-day sessions, and frequently one can hear Springsteen calling out key changes live as the band explores its way through the tracks. A tour began the same month, with the strong ensemble of musicians dubbed The Seeger Sessions Band and later shortened to The Sessions Band.

Seeger Sessions material was emphasized, as well as a handful of usually drastically rearranged Springsteen numbers. The tour proved very popular in Europe, selling out everywhere and receiving some excellent reviews, [50] but newspapers reported that a number of U. Bruce Springsteen with The Sessions Band: Live in Dublin , containing selections from three nights of November shows at the Point Theatre in Dublin, Ireland, was released the following June. Springsteen's next album, titled Magic , was released on October 2, Recorded with the E Street Band, it had 10 new Springsteen songs plus " Long Walk Home ", performed once with the Sessions band, and a hidden track the first included on a Springsteen studio release , " Terry's Song ", a tribute to Springsteen's long-time assistant Terry Magovern, who died on July 30, Greatest Hits reentered the Irish charts at No.

It was announced on November 21, , that Springsteen's longtime friend and founding E Street Band member, Danny Federici , would be taking a leave of absence from the Magic Tour to pursue treatment for melanoma. Charles Giordano filled in as Federici's replacement. Federici returned to the stage on March 20, , when he appeared for portions of a Springsteen and E Street Band performance at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.

The set of appearances and promotional activities led Springsteen to say, "This has probably been the busiest month of my life. Springsteen supported Barack Obama's presidential campaign , announcing his endorsement in April [66] and going on to appear at several Obama rallies as well as performing several solo acoustic performances in support of Obama's campaign throughout , [67] culminating with a November 2 rally at which he debuted the song " Working on a Dream " in a duet with Scialfa.

Following Obama's electoral victory on November 4, Springsteen's song "The Rising" was the first song played over the loudspeakers after Obama's victory speech in Chicago's Grant Park. Springsteen was the musical opener for the Obama Inaugural Celebration on January 18, , which was attended by over , people. Springsteen's Working on a Dream album, dedicated to the memory of Danny Federici, was released in late January [63] and the supporting Working on a Dream Tour ran from April until November The tour presented few songs from the new album, with set lists dominated instead by classics and selections reflecting the ongoing lates recession.

Live in Hyde Park was released in Springsteen was among the recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors, an annual award to figures from the world of arts for their contribution to American culture, on December 6, He ended the remark "while I am the president, he is the Boss". Tributes were paid by several well-known celebrities including Jon Stewart who described Springsteen's "unprecedented combination of lyrical eloquence, musical mastery and sheer unbridled, unadulterated joy".

Springsteen was among a host of musicians who voiced extensive criticism regarding the merging of Ticketmaster with Live Nation , saying "the one thing that would make the current ticket situation even worse for the fan than it is now would be Ticketmaster and Live Nation coming up with a single system, thereby returning us to a near monopoly situation in music ticketing. The s ended with Springsteen named one of eight Artists of the Decade by Rolling Stone magazine [78] and with Springsteen's tours ranking him fourth among artists in total concert grosses for the decade.

The film, The Promise: Also airing on HBO, the documentary explored Springsteen's making of the album and his role in the production and development of the tracks. Clarence Clemons , the E Street Band's saxophonist and founding member, died on June 18, , of complications from a stroke. He created a wondrous and extended family. He loved the saxophone, loved our fans and gave everything he had every night he stepped on stage. Springsteen's 17th studio album, Wrecking Ball , was released on March 6, The album consists of eleven tracks plus two bonus tracks.

Three songs previously only available as live versions—"Wrecking Ball", " Land of Hope and Dreams ", and "American Land"—appear on the album. As tickets for the first U. Shows sold out within minutes and many tickets appeared, at much higher prices, on resale websites such as StubHub less than an hour after the onsale time. Ticketmaster said web traffic was 2. On July 31, , in Helsinki , Finland, Springsteen performed his longest concert ever at 4 hours and 6 minutes and 33 songs. Not included in this total time is a thirty-minute, five-song, solo acoustical set he did about two hours before the show.

Springsteen was honored with the MusiCares Person of the Year award in recognition of his creative accomplishments as well as his charitable work and philanthropic activities.

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Despite saying he would sit out the presidential election , Springsteen campaigned for President Barack Obama's re-election in Ohio , Iowa , Virginia , Pittsburgh , and Wisconsin. At the rallies, he briefly spoke to the audience and performed a short acoustic set that included a newly written song titled "Forward". Two days later, Springsteen dedicated his performance at the Blue Cross Arena in Rochester, New York , to those affected by the storm and those helping to recover. All money was donated to the American Red Cross. The Concert for Sandy Relief.

The tour finished second to Roger Waters , who had the top grossing tour of In March , and for the first time since re-uniting with Springsteen in , Steven Van Zandt was forced to miss the Australian leg of the band's tour due to acting commitments on his television show Lilyhammer. He was replaced by guitarist Tom Morello for the leg.

The Wrecking Ball Tour , which came to an end in September , was one of Springsteen's most successful. A week after it ended, Springsteen announced a tour that would include dates in Australia and New Zealand. The induction ceremony was held at the Academy's headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts in October In October , Springsteen posted a letter on his website thanking fans of all ages for their support throughout the Wrecking Ball World Tour.

A highlight video of the tour was also released showing a new studio recording of the Suicide song, "Dream Baby Dream". Springsteen released his eighteenth studio album, High Hopes , on January 14, The first single and video were of a newly recorded version of the song " High Hopes ", which Springsteen had previously recorded in The album was the first by Springsteen in which all songs are either cover songs, newly recorded outtakes from previous records, or newly recorded versions of songs previously released.

It was announced on January 15, that Springsteen would start making professional recordings of all of his live shows available following each performance on his upcoming tour via download to a special USB wristband. The tour was considered to be a continuation of the Wrecking Ball Tour. High Hopes became Springsteen's eleventh No. American Beauty , a limited edition four-song EP on inch vinyl released exclusively for Record Store Day on April 18, contains four unreleased songs from the High Hopes sessions.

After 34 shows and songs performed, the High Hopes Tour came to an end on May 18, Springsteen released a short film for the song " Hunter of Invisible Game " on July 9, through his website. It marked Springsteen's directorial debut. Springsteen made his acting debut in the final episode of Season 3 of Van Zandt's show Lilyhammer , which was named "Loose Ends", after a Springsteen song on his album Tracks.

Giuseppe is an undertaker and owner of a funeral parlor who occasionally works as a hitman for a mafia family with which Frank is associated. In November , Springsteen announced that he would be opening the Bruce Springsteen Archives and will release live concerts from throughout his career including many shows which fans consider to be among his most essential performances and that were only previously available through bootlegs.

Each show has been completely restored, remixed and remastered for the highest possible sound quality and are available for purchase through digital download or CD at live. The River Collection box set. Released on December 4, it contains four CDs including many previously unreleased songs and three DVDs or Blu-ray along with a page coffee table book. A Concert for Progress on Race in America. Springsteen also discussed plans for a new solo album however plans were put on hold to tour with the E Street Band in support of The Ties That Bind: Springsteen said "the project I've been working on is more of a solo project.

It wasn't a project I was going to probably take the band out on. So I said, 'Gee, that's going to push the band playing again until a ways in the future. It'll be nice to get some playing in so you don't wind up being two or three years between E Street tours. All first-leg shows in North America included an in-sequence performance of the entire The River album along with other songs from Springsteen's catalog, and all dates were recorded and made available for purchase. In July , Springsteen's manager, Jon Landau, discussed Springsteen's upcoming solo album, which is expected for release in , saying "All I can say is that there is a solo record — and when I say solo record, I'm not talking about an acoustic record.

It is, in fact, a very expansive record, a very rich record. It's one of Bruce's very creative efforts. Stay tuned, and we'll see exactly how that shapes up next year. On September 23, , Chapter and Verse , a compilation from throughout Springsteen's career dating back to , was released. Five of the album's eighteen tracks had not been previously released; they include Springsteen's earliest recording from , songs from his tenure in early s bands such as the Castiles, Steel Mill and The Bruce Springsteen Band, along with a track from each studio album of his career.

Springsteen began the final leg of The River Tour on August 23, , at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey where he performed for 3 hours and 52 minutes making it at the time the longest show he had ever performed in the United States. That record again was topped on September 7, , at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , where Springsteen performed for 4 hours and 4 minutes, which now stands as his longest show in the United States and second-longest ever next to a show in Helsinki which lasted two minutes longer.

Springsteen supported Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign by performing an acoustic set of "Thunder Road", "Long Walk Home" and "Dancing in the Dark" at a rally in Philadelphia on November 7, On November 22, , Springsteen was presented—along with twenty other recipients—the Presidential Medal of Freedom award by Barack Obama. We're a long way from home, and our hearts and spirits are with the hundreds of thousands of women and men that marched yesterday in every city in America, and in Melbourne We stand with you.

We are the new American resistance. Springsteen on Broadway , an eight-week run at the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway in New York City in fall , was announced in June [] and in addition to his music, includes Springsteen reading excerpts from his autobiography Born to Run and performing other spoken reminiscences written for the show.

With rumors swirling that Springsteen's solo shows on Broadway could continue well past their current June end date, on January 18, , Nils Lofgren was asked on Twitter if the E Street Band will ever tour with Bruce again. Lofgren responded saying "I sure hope so" however Gary Tallent responded saying that it was "looking unlikely though" fueling rumors of the end of the E Street Band. I like Nils' answer better".

The E Street Band will be back out on the road. For Springsteen's production of Springsteen on Broadway , he was honored with a special award at Tony Awards. On December 2, , Springsteen announced that new music was on the way but the E Street Band would not be touring in He is taking a break after his Broadway run and various recording projects.

Springsteen draws on many musical influences from the reservoir of traditional American popular music, folk , blues and country. From the beginning, rock and roll has been a dominant influence and Springsteen's musical and lyrical evocations, as well as public tributes, of artists such as Dylan, Presley, The Animals , Roy Orbison , Gary "U. Springsteen songs such as "This Hard Land" demonstrate the lyrical and musical influence of Woody Guthrie. Prominent in these two records is the pianist David Sancious , who left the band shortly into the recording of Springsteen's third album, Born To Run which also emphasized the piano, played by Roy Bittan.

Subsequently, Springsteen focused more on the rock elements of his music. He initially compressed the sound and developed Darkness on the Edge of Town just as straightforward as concise musical idiom, for the simple riffs, rock guitar solos and clearly recognizable song structures are dominant. This music has a lyrical reference to the U. This development culminated with Springsteen's hit album Born in the U. These sounds fit with Springsteen's voice: Even songs that can be argued to be album tracks proved to be singles that enjoyed some chart success, such as " My Hometown " and " I'm on Fire ", in which the drum line is formed from subtle hi-hat and rim-clicks-shock shock at the edge of the snare drum accompanied by synthesizer and Springsteen's soft guitar line.

The album, along with some previous records such as "Cadillac Ranch" showed clear rockabilly influences as is evident from his guitar solos, in-fills and vocal styles on these. Another clear influence of early rock n roll on Springsteen's music is evident on the song "Light of Day". In recent years, Springsteen has changed his music further. There are more folk elements up to the gospel to be heard. His last solo album, Devils and Dust , drew rave reviews not only for Springsteen's complex songwriting, but also for his expressive and sensitive singing.

On the album We Shall Overcome: On his ensuing tour he also interpreted some of his own rock songs in a folk style. On his album, Wrecking Ball , Springsteen incorporated a variety of styles, including folk, gospel, and even hip-hop, with a rap in the song "Rocky Ground". His studio work with producer Ron Aniello, Wrecking Ball and High Hopes , has also become more experimental, featuring loops and computerized sounds. Often described as cinematic in their scope, Springsteen's lyrics frequently explore highly personal themes such as individual commitment, dissatisfaction and dismay with life in a context of everyday situations.

It has been recognized that there was a shift in his lyrical approach starting with the album Darkness on the Edge of Town , in which he focused on the emotional struggles of working class life. Springsteen liked her voice and after the performance, introduced himself to her. Soon after that, they started spending time together and became friends. According to the book Bruce Springsteen on Tour — by Dave Marsh, it looked like Springsteen and Scialfa were on the brink of becoming a couple through the first leg of the tour.

His next album, Tunnel of Love , was released in the autumn of and many of its songs described his unhappiness in the relationship with Phillips. She expressed reluctance at first, since she wanted to start recording her first solo album, but after Springsteen told her that the tour would be short, she agreed to postpone her own solo record.

Springsteen and Scialfa fell in love with each other during the Tunnel of Love Express Tour and started living together soon after his separation from Phillips. Citing irreconcilable differences , Julianne filed for divorce in Los Angeles on August 30, ; [] a settlement was reached in December and it was finalized on March 1, Springsteen received press criticism for the hastiness in which he and Scialfa took up their relationship.

In a interview with The Advocate , Springsteen told Judy Wieder about the negative publicity the couple subsequently received. But the truth is, I basically ignored the entire thing as much as I could. I said, 'Well, all I know is, this feels real, and maybe I have got a mess going here in some fashion, but that's life. So part of me said, 'Hey, what does it matter? It's very different than just living together. First of all, stepping up publicly—which is what you do: You get your license, you do all the social rituals—is a part of your place in society and in some way part of society's acceptance of you Patti and I both found that it did mean something.

Springsteen and Scialfa lived in New Jersey, before moving to Los Angeles, where they decided to start a family.

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When the children reached school-age in the s, Springsteen and Scialfa moved back to New Jersey specifically to raise a family in a non- paparazzi environment. The grounds of his New Jersey home include a large swimming pool. The family owns and lives on a horse farm in Colts Neck and a home in Rumson ; they also own homes in Los Angeles and Wellington, Florida.

It has been reported that the press conference regarding the Super Bowl XLIII half-time show was Springsteen's first press conference in more than 25 years. Springsteen has talked about his mental health struggles. Springsteen is an activist for LGBT rights and has spoken out many times as a strong supporter of gay marriage. In , he posted the following statement on his website: Springsteen noted in the ad, "I couldn't agree more with that statement and urge those who support equal treatment for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to let their voices be heard now.

Springsteen released an official statement on his website. Springsteen was out riding his motorcycle on November 11, when it broke down and he was stranded alongside the road. A group of men from the Freehold American Legion in New Jersey were returning from a Veterans Day event on their motorcycles when they spotted Springsteen and stopped to help.

Springsteen hitched a ride on the back of one of the men's motorcycles to a nearby restaurant where the group grabbed a round of drinks, for which Springsteen picked up the tab, while waiting for his ride. While rejecting religion in his earlier years, Bruce stated in his autobiography Born To Run , he has "a personal relationship with Jesus. I believe in his power to save, love In terms of Catholic faith, he has stated that he "came to ruefully and bemusedly understand that once you're a Catholic you're always a Catholic" and "I don't participate in my religion but I know somewhere I'm still on the team.

In an interview in with Tom Hanks , Springsteen admitted to having been a tax evader early in his career. Springsteen has been a member of, or has been backed by, several bands during his career, most notably the E Street Band. The E Street Band performed on all of Springsteen's recorded works from his debut until 's Nebraska , a solo album on which Springsteen himself played all the instruments.

The full band returned for the next album Born in the USA , but from to , albums were recorded with session musicians. The E Street Band briefly reunited in for new contributions to the Greatest Hits compilation, and on a more permanent basis from , since which time they have recorded more albums and performed a number of high-profile tours. Song of the Year is credited to the songwriters and not the performer, The song was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Springsteen disambiguation.

At the Roskilde Festival in Long Branch, New Jersey , U. Rock heartland rock folk rock rock and roll. This was different, shifted the lay of the land. Four guys, playing and singing, writing their own material Rock 'n' roll came to my house where there seemed to be no way out But then I realize that the thing is just too useful, too crazily convenient a tool to not embrace. Herewith, a partial guide: The book follows a woman named Rose all the way from her early childhood to her middle age, and never feels stretched.

Best story, in the category of autobiographical-seeming stories about love: Best story, in the category of historical drama: Best story, all categories: Story featuring most implausible twist: Turns out, the cold one was an identical twin. She acknowledges the silliness within the story, but still. Stories featuring drownings or near-drownings: The brilliant little breakfast scene with the Willa-Cather -obsessed man is a joy. Most uplifting story that will somehow leave you depressed: A sense of never-quite-resolved unease hovers over this story like a snowstorm. Lives of Girls and Women: An Overview of the Euro Crisis.

Clicking through its various cataclysmic scenarios, watching the arrows shift and the pastel circles grow pregnant with debt, I was able to comprehend, for the first time, the convoluted and potentially toxic lending relationships between Greece, Italy, and the rest of Schengen Europe as well as the implications of this toxicity for the wider world. The reduction of such messiness into such neatness filled me with a familiar, slightly nauseating feeling of delight, a feeling I have since dubbed the infogasm.

This fleeting sense of the erotic occurs only when a graphic perfectly clarifies complex phenomena through the careful arrangement of its visual data sets. The infogasm is instantaneous, overwhelming, and usually transitory in nature, leaving you oddly exhausted. In , neuroscientist Douglas Nelson definitively described the cognitive potency of the image as the pictorial superiority effect. He and others have shown that our brains are essentially hard-wired for visuals—the very architecture of our visual cortex allows graphics a unique mainline into our consciousness. We remember the girl with red geek-glasses who stooped down to give us back our pen outside of the LensCrafters on 81st St.

We place our own mental pin on the map alongside the others. But what color do we choose? Are there different categories of missed connections? We turn to the key for answers. We turn back to the map, reexamining the city with a new filter. Were these all the same person, a missed encounter on repeat? And why so few W4Ws? Was she about to enter the museum, or was she already emerging—basking in the wondrous glow of science—when she spotted the other woman? Maybe the museum never entered into it. It is no surprise, then, that our media are now saturated with such infographics, both on-and off-line, as a host of publications such as The New York Times , Good , The Guardian , Wired , Time, The Economist, The Believer, and The Wall Street Journal all regularly depend on data visualizations to provide their readers with that on-the-spot, quasi-highbrow sociological analysis.

As one might expect, the output is decidedly mixed. Faced with a glut of mediocre charts and diagrams, there is now a backlash among designers and journalists against the overuse of meaningless infographics. And yet, as someone obsessed with the methodologies of storytelling, I cannot help but wonder about the hidden narrative mechanics behind the infographic.

Perhaps my infogasm is not as superficial or ephemeral as it might first appear. Effectively pairing depth with breadth is not a new problem.

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In his sprawling history of information , James Gleick describes how the invention of the semaphore, telegraph, telephone, and the first digital computer all posed significant discursive dilemmas by offering a simultaneous increase in the ease of data delivery alongside a necessary contraction of the language around this data. The more possibilities, the more uncertain the eventual outcome, the more bits are needed. In , Edward Tufte —considered by many to be the Godfather of information design—published his now-seminal The Visual Display of Quantitative Information , which began to articulate an ethos for what was then still a relatively nascent discipline.

Since then, much has changed in the field of data visualization, especially once the graphically flexible web page became the standard information carrier and the rise of Web 2. But as futurist George Dyson points out , while our access to raw information has grown exponentially, our time to process this information has declined rapidly, which has placed an unprecedented premium on the act of meaning-making. Inspiring a New Visual Language. Sometimes design compendiums can come off as uneven affairs, but Visual Storytelling is a thoughtful, curated tour de force —it effectively encapsulates a watershed moment in information design while still managing to hold up as a standalone volume.

The book presents over designers from around the world not surprisingly, much of the best design work comes for Europe , gracefully organized across five chapters: Several of their sketches and drafts are also presented alongside their finished work and it was helpful for me to see their work in this kind of context. Pulling back the curtain on their process made the sometimes overly slick infographic feel like a very human creation.

These practitioners, like us, are constantly struggling with how to represent the world around us. Such an ambitious pursuit will always remain a work-in-progress. Some of them are beautiful. Some of them are completely confusing. Taken in its entirety, the book feels like an honest, wide-reaching portrait of the field. When faced with a cornucopia of such infographic pornography, the brain begins to shut down, so in order to avoid infogasm overload , I recommend getting your dual-coding fix in small, measured doses, and then putting the book down and slowly moving away from it. Indeed, looking through this volume, I came to realize that skillfully rendered visuals, like any effective medium, present the reader with a layered release of storylines.

An initial narrative will shift and deepen under sustained scrutiny, raising a series of questions that build off one another. This does not mean all these states went Democrat—of the Mountain states only New Mexico and Colorado voted for Obama—but rather that the barometer of the average American voter changed significantly.

The only regions that went remarkably right of were Appalachia and the so-called Bible Belt, both places which would later become fertile grounds for the Tea Party. There are also many questions here: What about eastern North Dakota? Did Massachusetts vote more conservative simply because John Kerry was not running? Or was there another factor at play? The whole narrative of the election is not encapsulated in this graphic, nor should it be—infographics are at their best when they help you visualize one particularly illuminating trend that could not be told in any other way.

The most successful infographics operate with elegance and restraint, and it is this restraint—this withholding of other information so that you can see a point clearly—that forces you to ask the big questions. When firing on all cylinders, infographics are almost always the beginning of a conversation, not the end of it. Other graphics in Visual Storytelling demonstrate the fraught collision point of art and data, a grey area that has caused a lot of tension among designers and statisticians alike. There is the startling Years of World Cuisine , a powerful composition that uses various containers of blood arranged across a kitchen table to tell the history of bloodshed in the 20th century.

By tackling such a complex subject as human bloodshed with the metaphor of food preparation, the graphic risks oversimplifying the historical and cultural forces at work in all of these conflicts. Indeed, when pressed, the metaphor begins to unravel, or at least raise unintended questions: Why the creepy suspended ladles? Why are the Congo Wars about to get the KitchenAid mixer?

Then again, maybe this graphic is not asking for such close reading, nor does it claim to explain every piece of historical nuance. Its purpose is to be sensational and help you visualize what were previously murky statistics. What it does do well: Is this purpose enough to forgive the exploitative overtones of the piece? Visual Storytelling also features a fine selection of work from Nicholas Felton , one of our more gifted manipulators of visual information. Feltron, as he is know professionally, is particularly adept at allowing an emotional resonance to rise from the coalition of what would otherwise be fairly stark data.

His graphics and typography are pristinely rendered, with ample whitespace, but like all great storytellers, he knows that cultural and personal pathos arises from what data you leave off the page. Pollution is down, sleep issues up. Yet this infographic succeeds because the collective collation and bare presentation of this data against the backdrop of a recession offers us a fleeting peek into intimate moments during hard times, albeit intimacy that is repeated across millions of households.

Felton has become well known in design circles for publishing his own annual report , in which he collects, graphs, and maps his personal life in numbers: He undermines our expectations of how a corporate annual report should function by co-opting the form to examine the banalities of the everyday: Occasionally he will throw in a category that is not so much a category but rather a story left untold: These reports are so seductive because of their clinical composition and yet from this austerity, a kind of universal vulnerability emerges.

We know it is much messier than these clean lines of data suggest. In his attempt to summarize a year of his existence entirely through statistics, Felton essentially points to the beautiful impossibility of this task. We are more than sum of such evidence, but the evidence itself is at once heartbreaking and triumphant. Beyond these data-driven graphics, Visual Storytelling contains an array of more abstract, artistic pieces that provide a nice counterpoint to all of the nerdy number-crunching that often dominates the field. These are not infographics per se , but they ask questions of our intense relationship to images by playing with familiar visual tropes.

We have grown so comfortable with graphics in our lives that we often forget to maintain any kind of critical awareness about how infographics function, how they lure us in, how they tell their stories, how they can lie to us. Or are we the culmination of the graph? By leaving so much unspoken, the image implicitly asks us what happens when our bodies become the new pallets for information design. How will we mark out units? And what will the units be? Perhaps this process has already begun. HTML linking is so familiar to us now that it has essentially become invisible: But is this bit of code enough?

Will association eventually replace all exposition? This is not to say that everything contained in Visual Storytelling is a perfect culmination of the genre. Whether wittingly or unwittingly, the volume also contains several overburdened examples of information design, where the visual language of the graphic has completely obscured the meaning. Yet these failures were some of the most interesting images for me. We can learn a lot when the designer has lost the forest for the trees: The designer makes the mistake of thinking complex data needs complex presentation, when in fact the opposite is true.

One sees this same kind of visual cacophony all over the media. Readers myself included are guilty of succumbing to such colorful temptations: The introduction to Visual Storytelling: So much text, so little time. Heavy quotations, unresolved and unexamined, slap you in the face as you try to follow the meandering text columns.

The physical congestion of words on the page quickly overwhelms the actual content of the words themselves, as if the act of reading was a mere afterthought. These widespread mistakes, picked up and repeated across a wide swath of publications, prompted graphic designer Antonio Giner to pen the Statement Against Fictional Infographics , subsequently signed by designers from 27 countries. The six-point manifesto culminates in this demand: Infographics are neither illustrations nor "art". Whether this distinction can be made in practice remains to be seen.

Visuals are a notoriously slippery medium. Seemingly simple questions of graphical form can have powerful implications. This was never more evident than during the health care debates in , when Rep. This deliberate obscuration of the issue by way of poorly assembled visuals rubbed many designers the wrong way. This is always true, but with data visualization, the old adage is essential: Beyond political fisticuffs, poor design decisions can have serious, even deadly, consequences.

Assessing the Quality and Credibility of Technical Reports. Despite the great pleasures of the infogasm , it is evident that now, more than ever, we must be cautious with our information design. Visuals are easy to make, but they are also easy to fake, and their allure can turn them into potentially dangerous pieces of evidence.

This does not mean such negotiation should be a passive process. We need more excellent surveys like Visual Storytelling: Inspiring a New Visual Language to help us celebrate quality, shun mediocrity, and articulate the criteria for how infographics can remain luminous and profound. Beyond just disposable feel-good fodder for the Twittersphere, data visualization is the emblematic medium of our times, and the natural evolution of its form might be the greatest predictor of what is to come.

Lists The Future of the Book. For all those readers unwrapping shiny new devices, here are some links to get you going. Great article, thank you. Thanks for the comments, everybody! When used books are factored in, it sways the numbers even more towards print.

Are eReaders Really Green?

But no one buys an iPad just for reading books. Certainly something to think about. A couple thoughts I had: An ipad is a multi-function device, of which ebooks are a tiny part. This is the kind of discussion I had hoped to have. Are e-Readers Really Green? A couple of thoughts. Oh BTW, the following article calls some of your data into question. Great article — provocative and timely.

Are e-readers really eco-friendly? Gli eBook inquinano meno della carta. Ma gli eReader e i tablet? I was going to comment on the 50x power thing until I saw it already had been. This is a well-meaning but seriously flawed piece of writing. My Chin is on the Floor Digitality. Gli e-reader sono amici dell'ambiente? I just have to say that since I have a smartphone, I use my home computer less and less.

The book of love Sustainable from Scratch.

www.newyorkethnicfood.com: David Blum: Books, Biography, Blogs, Audiobooks, Kindle

Kindled Be Less Amazing. Print Books - Book Publishing Consultants. E-Books vs Print — Which is Greener? Clark College - Garbology Staging. Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. The Future of the Book. The assertion of the negative — not dead — seemed to me an odd way for the copy editor to introduce an article on good news for short story reading.

I find that when someone asserts that a thing the story , or an idea God , is not dead, they usually mean that a nostalgic version of the thing has lapsed and not been replaced by something comparably satisfying. What has changed with the story? Short story writing is alive and well. And consider all the print and online journals that survive on paid contest submissions, which is evidence of the large number of writers who aspire to be published authors.

The human impulse to tell stories has not diminished. Short story reading has declined. With few exceptions The New Yorker is one , mass circulation general interest magazines no longer publish short stories.