Guitar
An American Life
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From humble folk instrument to American icon, the story of the guitar is told in this "exceptionally well-written" memoir by the NPR commentator (Guitar Player).
In this blend of personal memoir and cultural history, National Public Radio commentator Tim Brookes narrates the long and winding history of the guitar in the United States as he recounts his own quest to build the perfect instrument.
Pairing up with a master artisan from the Green Mountains of Vermont, Brookes learns how a perfect piece of cherry wood is hued, dovetailed, and worked on with saws, rasps, and files. He also discovers how the guitar first arrived in America with the conquistadors before being taken up by an extraordinary variety of hands: miners and society ladies, lumberjacks and presidents' wives. In time, the guitar became America's vehicle of self-expression. Nearly every immigrant group has appropriated it to tell their story.
"Part history, part love song, Guitar strikes just the right chords." —Andrew Abrahams, People
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When Brookes finds that his beloved guitar has been hopelessly damaged by airport baggage handlers, he sets off on a journey to find the perfect handmade instrument to replace it. Inspired by the vast array of choices, as well as by luthier Rick Davis ("a luthier is a guitar maker who charges $1,000 per guitar"), Brookes becomes enthralled with the relationship between the instrument and the people involved with it, and how that link has developed and changed over time. The author, a regular commentator on NPR's Sunday Weekend Edition, contrasts the story of a guitar being built from a few simple (yet carefully chosen) pieces of cherry wood with alternating chapters on the history of the instrument. In doing so, he reminds us that all instruments even the iconic American guitar are ever-changing. Instead of compiling a book filled with dates and anecdotes, Brookes wisely chooses to focus on personalities, like Rick, the economics student turned Vermont guitar builder; Joseph Kekuku, the Hawaiian inventor of the slide guitar; and Jimi Hendrix, who, by lighting his guitar on fire, provided evidence of "the electricity of the music" and "combined it with a kind of ritual sacrifice." Finally, Brookes receives his finished guitar, and readers share in his joy as well as in the feeling of continuing a long tradition of music history.
