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Grown-Up Anger audiobook

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Grown-Up Anger Audiobook Summary

A tour de force of storytelling years in the making: a dual biography of two of the greatest songwriters, Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, that is also a murder mystery and a history of labor relations and socialism, big business and greed in twentieth-century America–woven together in one epic saga that holds meaning for all working Americans today.

When thirteen-year-old Daniel Wolff first heard Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” it ignited a life-long interest in understanding the rock poet’s anger. When he later discovered “Song to Woody,” Dylan’s tribute to his hero, Woody Guthrie, Wolff believed he’d uncovered one source of Dylan’s rage. Sifting through Guthrie’s recordings, Wolff found “1913 Massacre”–a song which told the story of a union Christmas party during a strike in Calumet, Michigan, in 1913 that ended in horrific tragedy.

Following the trail from Dylan to Guthrie to an event that claimed the lives of seventy-four men, women, and children a century ago, Wolff found himself tracing the history of an anger that has been passed down for decades. From America’s early industrialized days, an epic battle to determine the country’s direction has been waged, pitting bosses against workers and big business against the labor movement. In Guthrie’s eyes, the owners ultimately won; the 1913 Michigan tragedy was just one example of a larger lost history purposely distorted and buried in time.

In this magnificent cultural study, Wolff braids three disparate strands–Calumet, Guthrie, and Dylan–together to create a devastating revisionist history of twentieth-century America. Grown-Up Anger chronicles the struggles between the haves and have-nots, the impact changing labor relations had on industrial America, and the way two musicians used their fury to illuminate economic injustice and inspire change.

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Grown-Up Anger Audiobook Narrator

Dennis Boutsikaris is the narrator of Grown-Up Anger audiobook that was written by Daniel Wolff

Dennis Boutsikaris received an Obie Award for his performance in Sight Unseen and was Mozart in Amadeus on Broadway. His films include *batteries not included, The Dream Team, and Boys On The Side. His TV work includes And Then There Was One, The Last Don and Chasing The Dragon; he was most recently the D.A. of NY in Sidney Lumet’s 100 Centre Street.

About the Author(s) of Grown-Up Anger

Daniel Wolff is the author of Grown-Up Anger

More From the Same

Grown-Up Anger Full Details

Narrator Dennis Boutsikaris
Length 8 hours 50 minutes
Author Daniel Wolff
Category
Publisher HarperAudio
Release date June 13, 2017
ISBN 9780062676931

Subjects

The publisher of the Grown-Up Anger is HarperAudio. includes the following subjects: The BISAC Subject Code is Folk & Traditional, Genres & Styles, Music

Additional info

The publisher of the Grown-Up Anger is HarperAudio. The imprint is HarperAudio. It is supplied by HarperAudio. The ISBN-13 is 9780062676931.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

Craig

February 11, 2017

I received an advance copy of this first-rate book from the publisher and my blurb will be appearing on the cover when it's published in June, but might as well have any of you who are interested in Dylan, American music and the relationship between culture and history put it on your lists now.Wolff begins with the 1913 Calumet massacre--in which 73 members of an Upper Michigan mining community, including 60 children, were killed in a stampede almost certainly orchestrated by the company they were on strike against. Even if you know about Calumet, you'll learn something new, but Wolff's larger agenda is to provide a primer of the history and potential uses of anger, both political and personal. Reworking the well, but not completely-known story of Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, he shows how anger can function in music. The book would serve admirably as an introduction to Dylan and Woody, but even if you've read the mountains of words published about them, as I have, you'll come out seeing things from new angles.

John

February 02, 2018

Worker's rights, labor history, the red scare and the music of Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan (And Pete Seeger and others). It probably seems like this book has been written a thousand times, and it usually ends up a hackneyed mess of cliche and poor understanding of either labor history or folk music. This is not one of those books. Using the Calumet Massacre of 1913 as an anchor, this is a great read and an important story about how our collective past is told and remembered.

Michael

February 26, 2018

a great way to cover history- write two biographies and one history lesson at the same time.

Kristin

April 08, 2017

Revolving around mining, music and murder, Daniel Wolff’s Grown- Up Anger explores the 1913 Calumet massacre in Michigan, Woody Guthrie’s political proselytizing beginning in the 1930’s and a young Bob Dylan, destined for musical greatness. Wolff’s narrative introduces “Mother” Ella Reeve Bloor, a revolutionary in labor circles and a witness to the Calumet & Hecla Mining Company Christmas catastrophe, where 73 people died. An angry Mother Bloor relays the devastating details to Woody Guthrie and the rest is a raging history of battling societal constraints through song. This is definitely a relevant read given the state of our current affairs.

Jennifer

September 14, 2017

I enjoyed this quite a bit, though, for me the history of Calumet was more interesting than the Bob Dylan portions. It bounces around a bit, I'm not much of a Dylan fan, so those parts dragged for me, the rest of it was pretty interesting and written in an engaging style.

Lyn

January 18, 2020

Extremely interesting. Connecting the dots between Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan and the 1913 Calumet massacre.

Bill

February 18, 2020

I was only seven and a half years-old in the summer of 1965 when “Like a Rolling Stone” was released and so I have little memory of my impression of the song. Daniel Wolff's book begins with the story of Dylan's first Top 40 hit. Woody Guthrie's “This Land is Your Land” which was based upon a Baptist hymn was more familiar to me. I love Woody's line, “I've seen lots of funny men, some will rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen”("Pretty Boy Floyd"). The two legends met in 1961, as Dylan's idol was dying. The spirit of the Okie morphed into the Jewish kid from Minnesota. In 1913, the children of striking miners in Calumet, Michigan were killed in an accident where someone had yelled “fire” and blocked exits resulted in the tragedy. Guthrie wrote “1913 Massacre” years later, immortalizing the event. At the time Michigan was the largest source of copper in America. The Calumet Corporation was formed in response to the demand for copper for use in munitions during the Civil War. A boom and bust period followed at the end of the war. Meanwhile, Jimmy Rodgers and Gene Autry paved the way for Guthrie as Woody would for Dylan. Woody's time in California coincided with the Dust Bowl days where his fellow Okies; as portrayed in “The Grapes of Wrath”(my favorite novel), worked the fields beside despised immigrants. Dylan's influences, other than Guthrie, were mostly black musicians, including the singer Odetta, whose 1870 negro spiritual, “No More Auction Block,” became the melody used by Bob for his most famous song, “Blowin' in the Wind.” The book gives a comprehensive look at the union battles of the early 1900's. By 1964 Dylan was labeled a “protest singer,” especially after “The Times they are a-Changin',” adapted from a bagpipe tune and “With God on our Side,” based on an Irish rebel classic, “The Patriot's Game.” Dylan gave them a whole new meaning. After appearing with Joan Baez at the March on Washington, Dylan distanced himself from the Left. Guthrie had been more involved with it, writing songs for a documentary on the government built Grand Coulee Dam. One of my heroes, Pete Seeger, receives too little attention in the book; I live a short distance from Peekskill and am familiar with the riots involving Seeger and Paul Robeson. The world is on fire and we are led by a tweeting fool. Woody Guthrie is long gone and Dylan's last work was an album of Sinatra covers. The singer sounds as if he is in need of a large dose of Metamucil. Where have you gone FDR? Go Bernie. This was written on February 18, 2020 while listening to Woody Guthrie's Greatest Hits and a day after watching the John Ford film version of Steinbeck's novel, “The Grapes of Wrath.” The book is definitely a good read.

Gregg

August 08, 2017

This is an interesting juggle between the life of Woody Guthrie(which was fascinating), the Calumet disaster and Bob Dylan. I think the hardest part was tying Dylan's anger into Guthrie's anger and then tying that back to Calumet. As a piece of creative non-fiction it finds a way to tell these three parallel stories with lots of parallels throughout. I'd say that there is much more to the parallels that go unexplored. Its like a conversation between people, sometimes the conversation could have veered into different territories but it chose not to. It ends with a depressing reminder about how our economy is so much worse in terms of inequality than even the worse excesses of the gilded age. Wolff does a great job with the subject matter and weaving together a braided narrative.

Sally

September 09, 2018

I picked this up at a tiny bookshop in Copper Harbor, MI. I was looking for something about the Calumet Massacre. This touched on that story, intertwined with other topics like labor history and folk music. Very interesting.

Mimi

June 22, 2018

a cultural history of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie (and other folk singers) and their connection to the Calumet Massacre, part of a possible union busting plot, an interesting way to approach the far-left movement in the 20th century. Sometimes the story is tenuous, but overall fascinating.

John

January 05, 2018

This guy is me...

David

April 16, 2021

The original version of “1913 massacre” is haunting despite modern digital formats not doing justice to the ghostly quality of Guthrie’s voice and the sound of stylus on old scratchy vinyl. The incident, a stampede at a Christmas party for striking miners in Calumet, Michigan following the false shout of “fire,” is embedded in American folklore and the American consciousness. Bob Dylan was obsessed with the song and borrowed the medley for one of his first originals, “Song to Woody.” His versions were never recorded on any official album, but tabs for a version he sang at Carnegie Hall in the early 60’s can be found on the web readily.Grown-Up Anger appeared just last year and is a one-sit read despite its 250 pages; the additional notes and bibliography make it indispensable. Musician and author Daniel Wolff details the abominable incident, from the East Coast money investing in the copper mines around Calumet, Michigan to the ongoing labor dispute to the Christmas party where the “Copper Boss Thugs” falsely scream fire, causing a stampede that kills “73” children. The account is definitive, and only ends, recently, with authorial detective work determining whether the doors at the bottom of the stairs opened by pushing or pulling. As can be imagined, the incident and song are still a sore point in Calumet.The rest of the book analyses how the song was the centerpiece of Woody Guthrie’s philosophy and the impetus of Bob Dylan. Of all the books I’ve read on Guthrie, this is the best (with Woody, Cisco, & Me: Seamen Three In The Merchant Marine a close second). Joe Klein’s standard biography is way down on the list. Of the copious literature on Dylan (including one by the incredibly astute literary critic Christopher Ricks who also tackles Milton and Beckett), Wolff’s is the only book about Dylan on my shelves. Friends of mine know that I did not agree with the Nobel committee a couple of years back; the lionization of Dylan has gone a bit far. Daniel Wolff does about the best job in approaching Dylan. . .from this single incident and song, but also with humor rather than deification. It works spectacularly. At last a writer not on his knees in obeisance while writing about Dylan. Wolff’s work is a concise history of US labor from the point of view of one nasty incident, but also a brilliant look at two American “originals.” The anger of Guthrie and Dylan is his focus, though he does ably recount their careers and the song’s place in them.Wolff, earlier in his career, wrote a biography of Sam Cooke. Anyone who appreciates Cooke’s brilliant music and pitch perfect voice (sure he’ll buy that pretty girl a Coke!) should check out Wolff’s book and his account of a completely segregated U.S.A and the gospel world. Cooke was a Bad Ass.

David

April 08, 2020

** spoiler alert ** I learned a lot about Woody from this book. Wolff provides an even-handed description of his artistic development and genius, and how his political and personal "anger" fed and directed his work. I wish that Woody's anger had been more fully contextualized in terms of anger as a sociological phenomenon , and particularly in terms of reactionary propaganda production at the time. The Dylan stuff was interesting, but probably could have been an epilogue, or at least a Part II. Wolff lays out Woody and Bob's stories in parallel with eachother and with the story of the 1913 Calumet Massacre, where a bunch of kids were killed in a stampede (probably) caused by anti-union thugs. That parallel format has the weakness of placing the 1950s red scare and its impact on the arts at the end of Woody's story but not at the beginning of Bob's. Unfortunately, It turns out that the Red Scare is central to the solipsistic fear and anger that Wolff has Bob embodying. It's a convincing argument that kinda gets buried. Wolff provides a good history of copper mining in Michigan, union battles, and the Calumet Massacre, but again kind of undersells his argument about its impact on Woody. It seems like he sees Woody, when he sings about Calumet, as trying to tell a new kind of public-square horror story where the horror is being expressed for itself, without a political goal. I think Wolff is trying to get at the idea that Dylan almost, but didn't quite, pick up that same thread when he (sort of) invented teen angst, and that a piece of Woody's legacy remains untapped/developed because of the red scare. He muddles it up, but it's pretty interesting stuff.

Cat

June 02, 2019

We have certainly become a nation of sheep since those early days, but violence commonly accompanied many strikes during the Industrial Revolution. Many immigrants would not put up with the nonsense American workers did and there was lots of blood shed on both sides of those battles. When my friends and I discuss these strikes and battles, our kids are horrified at the violence. We tell them sometime it's necessary to progress and making a better world. They understand as they get older. What I think is telling as a society, is that we no longer seem to be teaching our children these histories. The play nice and conform and tolerate police have sort of been in power for a long while now, along with the ending of unions and work getting more ridiculous, I note the fear in the younger adults in our society. I would imagine Guthrie was far more aware of the various strikes and battles with large companies being closer to that era. Possibly just randomly picked one battle , out of the many, and wrote a song about it. Dylan, of course, being a fan, continued the battle cry. The books interesting in the research of tying the event to Guthrie and Dylan and protest. Anger and music seem to go hand in hand. So many protest songs....

Andrew

November 14, 2020

I just have to say that this will now go down as one of my favorite books I have ever read. I’ve never been much of a history lover, but I do love music, and especially pre 80’s music. I stumbled upon this book while looking to learn more about who Woody Guthrie was, and this book gave me that and so much more. I now have an incredible appreciation for folk music and it’s connection with America’s never ending labor struggle. The twists and turns and gut punches this book gave me! The stories were so real and tangible you feel like you’re right there, hard travelin’ with Woody, Bob and the hard working laborers that fueled the grown up anger.

Matt

July 08, 2022

This was a bit of music history, criticism, and true crime investigation around the subject of Guthrie’s song “1913 Massacre.” The story is sad and provocative but I found the background details about Guthrie the most interesting. He really was the first songwriter who sold themselves as a character or an image. The choices he made about how to dress or even where to place himself as a narrator in his songs crafted a character that became the stuff of folk tales itself. It’s definitely going to change the way I look at singers for a while.

Mark

January 07, 2018

This book is an outstanding exploration of labor politics, music, and culture. Wolff's insights into the music, particularly his discussion of "Bringing It All Back Home Again", were revelatory to me and have changed the way I think about Dylan, Guthrie, and labor politics in America. Plus, the deep dive into the Calumet mines was a really great exploration of one particular corporation that was, in many ways, an exploration of how the entire industrial economy worked during the late 19th and early 20th century. A great book. I know I will go back to it repeatedly in the years to come.

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