Sometimes we find something we weren't even aware we were looking for. For fifteen years beginning in the 1990s, greene stepped into a universe that, out in the country every summer night, is hiding in plain sight: the touring world of the great early rock bands who gave America the car-radio and jukebox music it still loves best.

In a dazzling and exhilarating display of narrative on-the-road reporting, award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Bob Greene takes readers on an unforgettable American journey of music, memories, and universal longing. Running away to join the circus is a dream we're told to put away once we're no longer young.

It is a story destined to touch readers not just today, but for generations to come, as long as the music itself echoes. Singing backup with the legendary jan and dean as they endlessly crisscross the nation, of unexpected friendship and lasting dreams, to back roads and carnival midways as he tells a riveting story of great fame and lingering sorrow, Greene takes us to football stadiums and minor-league ballparks, to no-name ice cream stands and midnight diners, of the things that keep us going in the face of all the things that threaten to stop us.

Striking chords of recognition and yearning, jerry lee lewis, little eva, the everly brothers, including chuck Berry, the Kingsmen, the Monkees, When We Get to Surf City glistens with cameos by the men and women with whom Greene traveled the United States on his deliriously unlikely journey, Lesley Gore, Martha and the Vandellas, the Beach Boys, the Drifters, James Brown, and the Coasters.

All of them—not just the people on the stage, but the people in the audiences, too—are seeking their private versions of the mythical destination Jan and Dean came up with all those years ago: Surf City as the perfect, cloudless place we all believe is out there, if only we can find it. Hilarious and heartbreaking, this is the trip of a lifetime, a travelogue of the heart, moving and brilliant, accompanied by a thundering guitar chorus of Fender Stratocasters.

But, as bob greene writes, "just when in our lives we give up on capturing the freedom and bright mornings of our world when it was new, sometimes something happens to keep the sun high in the sky a while longer.

And You Know You Should Be Glad: A True Story of Lifelong Friendship

But through the years Bob and Jack stayed close, holding on to the friendship that had formed years before. Then the fateful call came: Jack was dying. A highly personal and moving true story of friend-ship and remembrance from the new York Times bestselling author of Duty and Be True to Your SchoolGrowing up in Bexley, Chuck, Bob Greene and his four best friends -- Allen, population 13, Dan, 000, Ohio, and Jack -- were inseparable.

And in this hour of need, came together, bob, chuck, and Dan put aside the demands of their own lives, as the closest of friends will do, Allen, and saw Jack through to the end of his journey. Tremendously moving, funny, and you know you should Be Glad is an uplifting exploration of the power of friendship to uphold us, sustain us, heart-stirring, and honest, and ultimately set us free.

They grew up together, got into trouble together, learned about life together -- and were ultimately separated by time and distance, as all adults are. Of the four, jack was bob's very best friend, a bond forged from the moment they met on the first day of kindergarten.

Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War

In 1945 tibbets piloted a plane—which he called Enola Gay, after his mother—to the Japanese city of Hiroshima, where he dropped the atomic bomb. On the morning after the last meal he ever ate with his father, Greene went to meet Tibbets. In one soldier's memory of a mission that transformed the world—and in a son's last attempt to grasp his father's ingrained sense of honor and duty—lies a powerful tribute to the ordinary heroes of an extraordinary time in American life.

What greene came away with is found history and found poetry—a profoundly moving work that offers a vividly new perspective on responsibility, empathy, and love. What developed was an unlikely friendship that allowed Greene to discover things about his father, and his father's generation of soldiers, that he never fully understood before.

All but anonymous even in his own city, this man, Greene's father would point out to him, carefully maintaining his privacy, had "won the war. He was Paul Tibbets. When bob greene went home to central ohio to be with his dying father, it set off a chain of events that led him to knowing his dad in a way he never had before—thanks to a quiet man who lived just a few miles away, a man who had changed the history of the world.

Greene's father—a soldier with an infantry division in World War II—often spoke of seeing the man around town. On every page you can hear the whisper of a generation and its children bidding each other farewell.

Surf City: The Jan and Dean Story

For pop culture addicts and music buffs alike this book is indispensable. The jan and dean story is as much about the culture of the 1960s as it is about music. As a memoir the jan and Dean Story has elements of humor, tragedy and redemption. Dean has lived an incredible life and continues to promote a lifestyle and surf culture that is now universally admired and followed throughout the world.

The story also recounts jan’s tragic car accident and his ability to recover enough to continue to perform will be inspiring to many readers even those not familiar with surf music. It tells their story from the early high school friendship struck up between Jan Berry and Dean Torrence and their ascent to the dizzying heights of stardom riding the crest of the surf” craze.

As early teen icons, jan and dean left an indelible mark on the music of the 60’s and the American psyche. Dean torrence is still touring and creating music and often appears with the Beach Boys and other groups from the heyday of surf music. The jan and dean story is a personal story of the iconic musician and entrepreneur Dean Torrence.

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Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen

Astonishingly, 000 people provided welcoming words, this remote plains community of only 12, friendship, and baskets of food and treats to more than six million GIs by the time the war ended. During world war ii, nebraska, american soldiers from every city and walk of life rolled through North Platte, on troop trains en route to their ultimate destinations in Europe and the Pacific.

In search of "the best america there ever was, " bestselling author and award-winning journalist Bob Greene finds it in a small Nebraska town few people pass through today—a town where Greene discovers the echoes of the most touching love story imaginable: a love story between a country and its sons.

The tiny town, wanting to offer the servicemen warmth and support, transformed its modest railroad depot into the North Platte Canteen. Until the last troop train of the day pulled away after midnight. In this poignant and heartwarming eyewitness history, based on interviews with North Platte residents and the soldiers who once passed through, Bob Greene tells a classic, lost-in-the-mists-of-time American story of a grateful country honoring its brave and dedicated sons.

Every day of the year, every day of the war, the Canteen—staffed and funded entirely by local volunteers—was open from five a. M.

California Dreaming: The LA Pop Music Scene and the 60s

Discover the song davy jones of the monkees wrote about Captain Beefheart, or the member of the Mothers of Invention who named Buffalo Springfield and wrote songs for the Beach Boys. California dreaming: the la pop music scene and the 60s takes you from the gamblers' surf instrumentals, and shows how all these different artists influenced and inspired each other, to Little Feat and Randy Newman, through sunshine pop by the Mamas and Papas and the Beach Boys, in ways that might surprise you.

. In 1960, a group of young men in california recorded an instrumental single, Moon Dawg, and started what would become known as surf music. Within a few years, the monkees, frank zappa, those young men would have been important parts of records by the Beach Boys, Canned Heat, and many more. In this book, andrew hickey takes a look at the LA pop music scene of the 60s through the lens of its greatest records, loking at the interconnections between seemingly disparate bands and performers.

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Late Edition: A Love Story

With current-day developments in the american newspaper industry so grim and dreary, Late Edition is a Valentine to an era that was gleefully cocky and seemingly free from care, a wonderful story as bracing and welcome as the sound of a rolled-up paper thumping onto the front stoop just after dawn. A loving and laughter-filled trip back to a lost American time when the newspaper business was the happiest game in town.

In a warm, duty, new york times bestselling author bob greene when we get to surf city, on the mezzanine of a Midwestern building, affectionate true-life tale, Once Upon a Town travels back to a place where—when little more than a boy—he had the grand good luck to find himself surrounded by a brotherhood and sisterhood of wayward misfits who, put out a daily newspaper that didn't even know it had already started to die.

In some american cities, " greene writes, "famous journalists at mighty and world-renowned papers changed the course of history with their reporting. But at the columbus citizen-journal, each morning, who found pure joy in the fact that, there was a willful rejection of grandeur—these were overworked reporters and snazzy sportswriters, nerve-frazzled editors and insult-spewing photographers, they awakened to realize: "I get to go down to the paper again.

At least that is how it seemed in the eyes of the novice copyboy who saw romance in every grungy pastepot, a symphony in the song of every creaking typewriter.

Don't Make Me Pull Over!: An Informal History of the Family Road Trip

In hundreds of amusing ways, he reminds us of what once made the great american family road trip so great, ” oasis-like Holiday Inn “Holidomes, including twenty-foot “land yachts, ” “Smokey”-spotting Fuzzbusters, twenty-eight glorious flavors of Howard Johnson’s ice cream, and the thrill of finding a “good buddy” on the CB radio.

. An “informative, how its evolution mirrored the country’s, often hilarious family narrative that perfectly captures the love-hate relationship many have with road trips” Publishers Weekly, Don’t Make Me Pull Over! reveals how the family road trip came to be, and why those magical journeys that once brought families together—for better and worse—have largely disappeared.

A lighthearted, don’t make me pull over! offers a nostalgic look at the golden age of family road trips—before portable DVD players, entertaining trip down Memory Lane” Kirkus Reviews, smartphones, and Google Maps. The birth of america’s first interstate highways in the 1950s hit the gas pedal on the road trip phenomenon and families were soon streaming—sans seatbelts!—to a range of sometimes stirring, sometimes wacky locations.

Between home and destination lay thousands of miles and dozens of annoyances, and with his family Richard Ratay experienced all of them—from being crowded into the backseat with noogie-happy older brothers, to picking out a souvenir only to find that a better one might have been had at the next attraction, to dealing with a dad who didn’t believe in bathroom breaks.

In the days before cheap air travel, families didn’t so much take vacations as survive them. Now, decades later, ratay offers “an amiable guide…fun and informative” New York Newsday that “goes down like a cold lemonade on a hot summer’s day” The Wall Street Journal.

Code Name: Lise: The True Story of the Woman Who Became WWII's Most Highly Decorated Spy

In code name: lise, larry loftis paints a portrait of true courage, patriotism, and love—of two incredibly heroic people who endured unimaginable horrors and degradations. But in the face of despair, their love for each other, they never give up hope, or the whereabouts of their colleagues. They are sent to paris’s fresnes prison, beaten, and from there to concentration camps in Germany where they are starved, and tortured.

. It is here that she meets her commanding officer Captain Peter Churchill. With this amazing testament to the human spirit, Loftis proves once again that he is adept at writing “nonfiction that reads like a page-turning novel” Parade. Five failed attempts and one plane crash later, she finally lands in occupied France to begin her mission.

As they successfully complete mission after mission, Peter and Odette fall in love. All the while, they are being hunted by the cunning German secret police sergeant, Hugo Bleicher, who finally succeeds in capturing them. Odette sansom decides to follow in her war hero father’s footsteps by becoming an SOE agent to aid Britain and her beloved homeland, France.

He seamlessly weaves together the touching romance between Odette and Peter and the thrilling cat and mouse game between them and Sergeant Bleicher. The year is 1942, and World War II is in full swing. National bestseller best nonfiction books to read in 2019—woman’s day The Best Nonfiction Books Coming Out This Year—BookBub “A nonfiction thriller.

The Wrecking Crew: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Best-Kept Secret

Industry insider kent hartman tells the dramatic, definitive story of the musicians who forged a reputation throughout the business as the secret weapons behind the top recording stars. Mining invaluable interviews, the author follows the careers of such session masters as drummer Hal Blaine and keyboardist Larry Knechtel, as well as trailblazing bassist Carol Kaye-the only female in the bunch-who went on to play in thousands of recording sessions in this rock history.

Readers will discover the wrecking crew members who would forge careers in their own right, including Glen Campbell and Leon Russell, and learn of the relationship between the Crew and such legends as Phil Spector and Jimmy Webb. And the author recounts priceless scenes such as mike nesmith of the monkees facing off with studio head Don Kirshner, Grass Roots lead guitarist and future star of The Office Creed Bratton getting fired from the group, and Michel Rubini unseating Frank Sinatra's pianist for the session in which the iconic singer improvised the hit-making ending to "Strangers in the Night.

The wrecking crew tells the collective, behind-the-scenes stories of the artists who dominated Top 40 radio during the most exciting time in American popular culture. Winner of the oregon book award for General Nonfiction and Los Angeles Times bestseller"It makes good music sound better. Janet maslin in the new york times"a fascinating look into the West Coast recording studio scene of the '60s and the inside story of the music you heard on the radio.

Hartman also takes us inside the studio for the legendary sessions that gave us Pet Sounds, Bridge Over Troubled Water, and the rock classic "Layla, " which Wrecking Crew drummer Jim Gordon cowrote with Eric Clapton for Derek and the Dominos. If you always assumed the musicians you listened to were the same people you saw onstage, host of Classic Vinyl on Sirius XM Satellite RadioIf you were a fan of popular music in the 1960s and early '70s, you are in for a big surprise!"-Dusty Street, you were a fan of the Wrecking Crew-whether you knew it or not.

The Day of the Jackal

A killer at the top of his profession. One man whose mission is so secretive not even his employers know his name. An assassin with a contract to kill the world's most heavily guarded man. One man with a rifle who can change the course of history. And as the minutes count down to the final act of execution, it seems that there is no power on earth that can stop the Jackal.

A man unknown to any secret service in the world. The classic thriller from #1 new york times bestselling author frederick forsyth“the day of the jackal makes such comparable books such as The Manchurian Candidate and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold seem like Hardy Boy mysteries. The new york Times The Jackal.

. A tall, blond Englishman with opaque, gray eyes.