Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

This text introduces the reader to a new cultural category. While the authors do not claim to have discovered Cool, they believe they are the first to attempt a penetrating analysis of Cool's history, psychology and significance. The contemporary "cool" attitude is barely 50 years old, but its roots are older than that. This book traces Cool's origins in European, Asian, and African cultures, its prominence in the African-American jazz scene of the 1940s, and its pivotal position within the radical subcultures of the 1950s and '60s. The authors examine various art movements, music, cinema, and literature, moving from the dandies and "flaneurs" of the 18th and 19th centuries through to the expropriation of a whole cultural and psychological tradition by the media in the 1980s and '90s.

Reviews

packed with interesting stuff the authors investigate with a fair measure of their own detachment, and the breadth of their study indicates that they really do know where it's at. Independent on Sunday a fascinating, scholarly work, pinning down a determinedly elusive subject. Literary Review

Author Bio

Dick Pountain is a non-executive director of Dennis Publishing and a former reviews editor on Ink and Oz magazines. David Robins is the author of Tarnished Vision: Crime and Conflict in the Inner City (1992).