Jazz in American Culture (American Ways Series)

This brief but thorough survey is an accessible history of jazz, suitable for listeners new to the music and for those who have long been familiar with it. Burton W. Peretti takes as his thesis the notion that jazz is intimately linked with American history, "associated with the rise and fall of America's cities [and] with the fluctuating reputation of American culture around the world." In this examination of the music and the men and women who made it, Peretti traces the links between jazz and the culture that formed it (and that was, in turn, influenced by it).