Gary Giddins Named Acting Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the CUNY Graduate Center
September 16, 2011

City University of New York Graduate Center President William Kelly announced today the appointment of Gary Giddins as the Acting Director of The Leon Levy Center for Biography.

The Center, which was established by a generous gift from The Leon Levy Foundation, is devoted to building connections between independent and university-affiliated biographers across the disciplines. The Center sponsors the Annual Biography Lecture in the fall, the Annual Conference on Biography in the spring, and a variety of public programs throughout the year. In addition, the Center hosts four resident biography fellows and provides two dissertation fellowships to Graduate Center students.

"I am delighted that Gary has agreed to lead the Center," said President Kelly. "He is a writer of great range and remarkable grace. He is the author of twelve books, including biographies of Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. He is currently at work on the second volume of his definitive biography of Bing Crosby."

Giddins' work has been widely celebrated. His Visions of Jazz won the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism. He's been a Guggenheim Fellow and is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Jazz Journalists Association. He has won a Peabody Award, a Grammy, and an unprecedented six Deems Taylor Awards for Excellence in Music Criticism. His essays have appeared in every major journal of opinion, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Esquire. He is currently Distinguished Lecturer at the Graduate Center, where he teaches courses in American cultural history.

The Center's current director, the writer and scholar Brenda Wineapple, will be stepping down from the position on October 1.

Author John Matteson will work with Gary to expand The Leon Levy Center's engagement with the faculty and students of The City University. Matteson was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for Eden's Outcast: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father. His new book, The Lives of Margaret Fuller, will appear in January from Norton.

For more information on the Leon Levy Center for Biography, visit http://web.gc.cuny.edu/llcb/.

Pre-Release Reviews for Warning Shadows: Home Alone with Classic Cinema
February 12, 2010

Publisher's Weekly on Warning Shadows:
Critic Giddins (Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Miracles) gleans fresh insights from novel juxtapositions in these essays drawn from his newspaper reviews of DVD collections. The DVD collection's raison d'etre is to group movies around organizing principles, which here run the gamut from Hitchcock retrospectives to Disney nature docs to Hollywood literary adaptations to charming oddities like a collection of silents starring Harry Houdini. The downside to reviewing them is that Giddins must glance at lesser works with little to recommend them, though he'll often notice a fine performance, catchy score or radiant lighting scheme gleaming through the dross. The payoff is the themes that emerge as he sifts a wealth of comparisons and contrasts. These range from the failings of Rodgers and Hammerstein (The Sound of Music is the happiest of all musicals involving Nazis ) to keen evocations of a movie star's aura, the casually authoritative stance of an Edward G. Robinson or the mulish twisting between bashful affability and cries de coeur of a Jimmy Stewart. Giddins is the ideal couch companion, erudite but relaxed and witty; his perceptive commentary shows that it's not what you watch, it's how you watch it.

Bertrand Tavernier on Warning Shadows:
Reading WARNING SHADOWS is an illuminating, rewarding experience. Giddins' approach is documented, sharp, intelligent and exciting. He never recycles cliches, he questions the clans and the cliques, and he writes very well of actors and actresses. He rightly considers that an opinion (even repeated by many zealous disciples) is not a fact. Whether he talks of the good ideas of Pabst that make the construction of his 3 Penny Opera better than the play, of Ford, Bing Crosby, Resnais or Tati's Trafic ("a step to the side, not back"), he inspires a violent urge to rush to a cinema or to buy a dvd to see those films again. He made me discover many neglected films (Overlord and The Garment Jungle to name a couple), the beautiful black and white of I Wake up Screaming, and newly appreciate underrated directors. Roland Barthes made a distinction between the subservient écrivants and the priestly écrivains. Clearly Giddins belongs to the second category.

Richard Schickel on Warning Shadow:
Gary Giddins is as close to being a perfect critic as we're likely to see in our time. His style is at once easy and authoritative, and a seductive delight to read. He has an uncanny eye for detail--for the way films are shot and edited, for the subtle play of emotions on an actor's face, and for the way they illuminate their moment and take their place in history. Most important, his patiently arrived at judgments are witty, impeccable and to my mind, indisputable. I'd rather read Giddins on the movies than go to most of them.

Patricia Bosworth on Warning Shadows:
Warning Shadows is funny, elegant, and smart. Gary Giddins is unashamed of his love for little films as well as legendary ones, and for the art, and for its artists. There are wonderful anecdotes and dazzling insights. A wealth of knowledge fuels his writing, making for truly splendid reading.

Leonard Maltin on Warning Shadows:
What a pleasure to read these wonderfully articulate essays about vintage films and filmmakers, from Buster Keaton to Sam Fuller. Gary Giddins is as eloquent as he is knowledgeable.

Warning Shadows: Home Alone with Classic Cinema goes on sale April 19!

Jazz now available!
September 1, 2009

In this vivid history of jazz, a respected critic and a leading scholar capture the excitementof America's unique music with intellectual bite, unprecedented insight, and the passion of unabashed fans. They explain what jazz is, where it came from, and who created it and why, all within the broader context of American life and culture. Emphasizing its African American roots, Jazz traces the history of the music ocer the last hundred years. From ragtime and blues to the international craze for swin, from the heated protests of the avant-garde to the radical diversity of today's artists, Jazz describes the travails and triumphs of musical innovators struggling for work, respect, and cultural acceptance set against the backdrop of American history, commerce, and politics. With vibrant photographs by legendary jazz chronicler Herman Leonard, Jazz is also an arresting visual history of a century of music.

Jazz critic Gary Giddins, author of Visions of Jazz, Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams, and Natural Selection, teaches at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He lives in New York City. Scott DeVeaux, author of The Birth of Bebop, has taught jazz history at the University of Virginia for over twenty years. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.