One for Carry On naysayers as well as the fans, this anniversary insight into a very British world is filled with waspish bon mots, extensive interviews and lots of amusing detail. A comprehensive and warm biography of the key players, as well as the films themselves.

Richard Webber's book is a chronological trawl through the Carry On series covering everything from early successes like Carry On Sergeant, to classics like Carry On up the Khyber ... our most enduring films have been about getting nookie at all costs and the consolations of the biscuit tin. The French got Truffaut, we got Bisto. Bring it on

enjoyable

In this sympathetic, well-researched history, Richard Webber retrieves some of the more lubricious lines lost to the British Board of Censors ... the Carry Ons have become a part of British film history, like Hitchcock and Hammer horror. As vulgar as flock wallpaper, as cheap as fish and chips, they hold a special place in the hearts of young and old alike

fascinating

Webber understands the Carry On phenomenon entirely: how it's all about the oddness, the dowdiness, the sheer physical uncomfortableness of the British - and their frank terror of sex, best coped with by laughing at it.

A trip down what's to many of us a happily familiar lane

Sean Wilentz makes us think about Bob Dylan's half-century of work in new ways. Combining a scholar's depth with a sense of mischief appropriate to the subject, Wilentz hears new associations in famous songs and sends us back to listen to Dylan's less familiar music with fresh insights. By focusing on the parts of Dylan's canon that most move him, Wilentz getsstraight to the heart of the matter. If you thought there was nothing new to say about Bob Dylan's impact on America, this book will make you think twice

Sean Wilentz's beautiful book sets a new standard for the cultural history of popular music in America

Unlike so many Dylan-writer-wannabes and phony 'encyclopedia' compilers, Sean Wilentz makes me feel he was in the room when he chronicles events that I participated in. Finally a breath of fresh words founded in hardcore, intelligent research

Writing about Bob Dylan's music, and fitting it into the great crazy quilt of American culture, Sean Wilentz sews a whole new critical fabric, part history, part close analysis, and all heart. What he writes, as well as anyone ever has, helps us enlarge Dylan's music by reckoning its roots, its influences, its allusive spiritual contours

It throws up a wealth of unexpected connections.

Did you know Bob Dylan loves Eileen Aroon? One of the many facts in Bob Dylan in America.

The result is a broad and brilliantly illuminating appreciation of Dylan as both performer and songwriter up to the present day

So charming and so acute that one cannot help forgiving him

You need to read this - period