A Historical Book Review of Glenn C. Altschuler’s All Shook Up: How Rock ‘N’ Roll Changed America
A Historical Book Review of Glenn C. Altschuler’s All Shook Up: How Rock ‘N’ Roll Changed America
By Stacey Peterik Music has been a huge part of history since it began back in prehistoric times. As the decades have passed, music has gradually changed to include a variety of different styles; each being influenced in some way by the early blues and rhythm and blues of the 1940’s and 1950’s. As it does currently, in that time period, music created many conflicts between generations. Also in those decades though, music created conflict between racial and gender classes. In his book, All Shook Up: How Rock ‘N’ Roll
Changed America, Glenn C. Altschuler discusses all of these conflicts and what rock ‘n’ roll did to aid or discourage them. Using analysis of primary sources and a narrative format, Altschuler makes a strong explanation and argument for how this music really affected and changed America.
Glenn C. Altschuler received his Ph.D. in American History from Cornell in 1976 and has been an
administrator and teacher at Cornell since 1981. He is currently the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin
Professor of American Studies and the Dean of the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. According to the Cornell University website, his year‐long course in American Popular Culture is among the most popular in the university. He is the author of several books on American history and popular culture, including Changing Channels: America in TV Guide.
All Shook Up is a social history that uses primary sources such as newspapers and magazines of
the time period, as well as other books on the subject matter to argue its main points. Altschuler chose to organize his book by topic, which worked really well in his narrative style because there are so many different aspects to how rock ‘n’ roll changed that time period from 1945 to 1965. He starts with a section on how pop music was
By Stacey Peterik Music has been a huge part of history since it began back in prehistoric times. As the decades have passed, music has gradually changed to include a variety of different styles; each being influenced in some way by the early blues and rhythm and blues of the 1940’s and 1950’s. As it does currently, in that time period, music created many conflicts between generations. Also in those decades though, music created conflict between racial and gender classes. In his book, All Shook Up: How Rock ‘N’ Roll
Changed America, Glenn C. Altschuler discusses all of these conflicts and what rock ‘n’ roll did to aid or discourage them. Using analysis of primary sources and a narrative format, Altschuler makes a strong explanation and argument for how this music really affected and changed America.
Glenn C. Altschuler received his Ph.D. in American History from Cornell in 1976 and has been an
administrator and teacher at Cornell since 1981. He is currently the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin
Professor of American Studies and the Dean of the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. According to the Cornell University website, his year‐long course in American Popular Culture is among the most popular in the university. He is the author of several books on American history and popular culture, including Changing Channels: America in TV Guide.
All Shook Up is a social history that uses primary sources such as newspapers and magazines of
the time period, as well as other books on the subject matter to argue its main points. Altschuler chose to organize his book by topic, which worked really well in his narrative style because there are so many different aspects to how rock ‘n’ roll changed that time period from 1945 to 1965. He starts with a section on how pop music was