In My Father's Shadow

Oct 6, 2024 12:19 AM

Author:Chris Welles Feder

Of all the myriad stars and celebrities Hollywood has produced, only a handful have achieved the fame - and, some would say, infamy - of Orson Welles, the creator and star of what is arguably the greatest film ever, Citizen Kane. Many books have been written about him, detailing his achievements as an artist as well as his foibles as a human being. None of them, however, has come so close to the real man as Chris Welles Feder does in this beautifully realised portrait of her father.

In My Father's Shadow is a classic story of a life lived in the public eye, told with affection and the wide-eyed wonder of a daughter who never stopped believing that some day she would truly know and understand her elusive and larger-than-life father. The result is a moving and insightful look at life in the shadow of a legendary figure and an immensely entertaining story of growing up in the unreal reality of Hollywood.

Reviews

An intimate, candid yet loving, very personal yet clear-eyed portrait of the complicated, contradictory, mercurial and surpassingly brilliant man . . . a beautifully written and moving memoir which should have a most special place in the extraordinary world of Welles

—— Peter Bogdanovich

Full of illuminating details . . . genuinely revelatory

—— The Guardian

[Feder] gives touching insights on her father

—— The Observer

Refreshingly insightful, intimately well observed

—— Metro

Fascinating . . . the opening of the book is haunting

—— Daily Telegraph

This is a personal book, and one born from a great deal of thought and pain - yet it is the opposite of hard-bitten. It has real integrity.

—— Sunday Times

Warm, witty and wise

—— The Scotsman

Both an exposé and a defence of Orson Welles by the daughter who spent a lifetime trying to impress him . . . offers a new perspective on a familiar career

—— Times Literary Supplement

A portrait of longing never quite fulfilled

—— The Oldie

Before now, much of hip-hop's history has been a cross between personal narrative and music commentary. Can't Stop Won't Stop goes to the next level, documenting hip-hop's cross cultural, political, economic and global intricacies. For too long it's been nearly impossible for hip-hop kids to find themselves on the pages of history. With Can't Stop, Won't Stop, Jeff Chang takes them there.

—— Bakari Kitwana, author of The Hip-Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture

An exuberant and revelatory history of the inner-city cultural revolution that still rocks the world. Jeff Chang is hip-hop's John Reed.

—— Mike Davis, author of Dead Cities, City of Quartz and Planet of Slums

His scope is operatic, sprawling, and concerns itself with the people, places, and politics that drove hip-hop from its infancy. . . . It is essentially a people's history . . . perhaps Jeff Chang is hip-hop America's Howard Zinn.

—— Salon.com

The birth of hip-hop out of the ruin of the South Bronx is a story that has been told many times, but never with the cinematic scope and the analytic force that Jeff Chang brings to it. . . . This is one of the most urgent and passionate histories of popular music ever written.

—— The New Yorker

When Hip-Hop 101 becomes a requirement, Jeff Chang's history of the turmoil that begat this beloved culture will be the go-to textbook.

—— Vibe magazine

The most important new genre of the last quarter century finally has a sweeping historical overview as powerful as the music with "Can't Stop Won't Stop" . . . the best-argued, most thoroughly researched case for hip-hop as a complete and truly American culture.

—— Chicago Sun-Times

You need to read this - period

—— Fact

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