AMERICAN SCREAM
Allen Ginsbergs's Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation

Reviews

• The 'Howl' heard rould the world: a review by Andrew Roe
  The San Francisco Chronicle, (Sunday April 4, 2004)
  
  
  
• Rebel Yell: The Voice that Wouldn't Die by Daniel Barth
  The Redwood Coast Review, (Fall 2004)

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When shy, soft-spoken 29-year-old Allen Ginsberg appeared before an audience at San Francisco’s Six Gallery on the evening of October 7, 1955, he was virtually unknown, but the unpublished poem he (with mounting fervor) read would propel him to fame with the suddenness and inevitability of Byron. By the time of Ginsberg’s death in 1997, "Howl" had sold 800,00 copies, and the incendiary, visionary poem is now the subject of Sonoma State professor Raskin’s thorough, accessible history. The strength of Raskin’s book is the balance it strikes between the personal drama of the poem’s composition and reception and the unfolding background of its historical circumstance.. . .