Legendary impresario Bill Graham began in January 1966 to commission posters to promote the concerts he was putting on at San Francisco’s Fillmore auditorium. The poster artists followed the revolutionary mandate of the sixties consciousness, creating vivid, irreverent banners that reflected their own sense of poetics, style, and wit. What resulted were signature juxtapositions of design, lettering, and color that spawned a brand new art form. Their muse was the cosmic synergy that then abounded, fueled in part by LSD. These posters have since come to occupy a place in art history while surviving priceless artifacts of rock archeology. Published in cooperation with Bill Graham Presents, this is an intoxicating compendium of the funkiest posters of the century. Highlighted in this unique, lavishly printed full-color volume are the original numbered and unnumbered series created exclusively for the San Francisco and New York Fillmore dance concerts. The more than 400 hand-drawn posters, handbills, tickets, and photographs feature art by Wes Wilson, Bonnie MacLean, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, Rick Griffin, Lee Conklin, Greg Irons, Randy Tuten, David Byrd, David Singer, and Norman Orr.

Harlem of the West reveals a forgotten slice of San Francisco history and the African-American experience on the West Coast: the thriving jazz scene of the Fillmore in the 1940s and 1950s. With archival photographs and oral accounts from the residents and musicians who experienced it, this vividly illustrated tour will delight jazz fans and history aficionados.

The best-selling visual history of the rock concert poster, now available at an irresistible price Electric, outrageous, erotic, rebellious—rock concert posters are the visual equivalent of the music they advertise. The Art of Rock traces the history of this energizing art form from the bold letterpress posters advertising Elvis’s early shows, through the multicolored fantasies of the psychedelic era, to the avant-garde collages of new wave and punk. More than 1,500 posters and other graphics—tickets, backstage passes, buttons, handbills—are presented in their original blazing color (or their stark black and white, as the case may be). The text features dozens of exclusive interviews with musicians, concert promoters, and the poster artists themselves, including legends like Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, or Wes Wilson—who also designed the cover of this book. A visual journey through thirty years of rock and roll, as well as a valuable reference, The Art of Rock is an essential volume for every music lover (and art lover).

The Rat Bastard ProtectiveÊAssociation was an inflammatory, close-knit community of artists who livedÊand worked in aÊbuilding they dubbed Painterland in the Fillmore neighborhood of midcentury San Francisco. The artists who counted themselves among the RatÊBastardsÑwhich included Joan Brown, Bruce Conner, Jay DeFeo,ÊWallyÊHedrick, Michael McClure, and Manuel NeriÑexhibited a unique fusion of radicalism,Êprovocation, and community. Geographically isolated from a viable art market and refusingÊto conform to institutional expectations, theyÊanimated broader social andÊartistic discussions through their work and became aÊtransformative part of American culture over time. Anastasia Aukeman presents new and little-known archival material in this authorized account of these artists and their circle, a colorful cultural milieu that intersected with the broader Beat scene.

The oddly named president whose shortsightedness and stubbornness fractured the nation and sowed the seeds of civil war In the summer of 1850, America was at a terrible crossroads. Congress was in an uproar over slavery, and it was not clear if a compromise could be found. In the midst of the debate, President Zachary Taylor suddenly took ill and died. The presidency, and the crisis, now fell to the little-known vice president from upstate New York. In this eye-opening biography, the legal scholar and historian Paul Finkelman reveals how Millard Fillmore's response to the crisis he inherited set the country on a dangerous path that led to the Civil War. He shows how Fillmore stubbornly catered to the South, alienating his fellow Northerners and creating a fatal rift in the Whig Party, which would soon disappear from American politics—as would Fillmore himself, after failing to regain the White House under the banner of the anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic "Know Nothing" Party. Though Fillmore did have an eye toward the future, dispatching Commodore Matthew Perry on the famous voyage that opened Japan to the West and on the central issues of the age—immigration, religious toleration, and most of all slavery—his myopic vision led to the destruction of his presidency, his party, and ultimately, the Union itself.

From 1968-1971, New York's Fillmore East was the greatest rock palace in the world. Kostelanetz, who attended the Fillmore religiously, has assembled a collection of his original program notes and memories on the performances and performers, including The Who, Grateful Dead, The Byrds, and Janis Joplin, to create this definitive history.

From the time he left office in 1853, President Millard Fillmore has become increasingly shrouded in mystery and stereotyped by anecdotes with slender connections to facts. The real Fillmore was not the weak and boring figurehead many Americans believe he was. This account of Fillmore's life is drawn largely from his family's personal papers, many of which have previously been suppressed or were unavailable or believed lost. It presents Fillmore as his own letters do, and as his friends, family members, and contemporaries saw him, as a distinguished and honorable man who was also a strong and effective president. This comprehensive work includes photographs, a genealogy of the Fillmore family, a chronology, a bibliography, and an index.