Dancing In The Streets: A History Of Collective Joy [Paperback]

Fascinating . . . An admirably lucid, level-headed history of outbreaks of joy from Dionysus to the Grateful Dead. Terry Eagleton,The Nation

Widely praised as impressive (The Washington Post Book World), ambitious (The Wall Street Journal), and alluring (The Los Angeles Times),Dancing in the Streetsexplores a human impulse that has been so effectively suppressed that we lack even a term for it: the desire for collective joy, historically expressed in revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing.

Drawing on a wealth of history and anthropology, Barbara Ehrenreich uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture. From the earliest orgiastic Mesopotamian rites to the medieval practice of Christianity as a danced religion and the transgressive freedoms of carnival, she demonstrates that mass festivities have long been central to the Western tradition. In recent centuries, this festive tradition has been repressed, cruelly and often bloodily. But as Ehrenreich argues in this original, exhilarating, and ultimately optimistic book, the celebratory impulse is too deeply ingrained in human nature ever to be completely extinguished.

Barbara Ehrenreichis the bestselling author ofNickel and Dimed, Bait and Switch, Bright-sided, This Land Is Their Land, andBlood Rites, among others. A frequent contributor toHarper'sandThe Nation, she has also been a columnist atThe New York TimesandTimemagazine. She is the winner of theL.A. TimesBook Prize for Current Interest and ALA Notable Books for Nonfiction.

Ehrenreich was born in Butte, Montana, when it was still a bustling mining town. She studied physics at Reed College, and earned a Ph.D. in cell biology from Rockefeller University. Rather than going into laboratory work, she got involved in activism, and soon devoted herself to writing her innovative journalism. She lives and works in Florida.

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