Peter Mills is Senior Lecturer in Media & Popular Culture at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK.

"As a highly academic treatment of an artist who deserves as much, Hymns to the Silence is a book that is long overdue, and Peter Mills opens many doors for fellow scholars in a variety of fields:music, literature, Irish studies, among many others. As a comprehensive analysis of Morrison's multi-decade body of work (one that remains very much "in progress" as Iwrite this), Hymns to the Silence should initiate many subsequent conversations across disciplines regarding Morrison's influences, songs, performances, and place in the history of popular music." - John P. McCombe - Popular Music and Society

• Acknowledgments Author's NoteIntroductionChapter One Imagining America: Jazz, Blues, Country, and the Mythologies of the WestChapter Two What Makes the Irish Heart Beat? The Irishness of Van MorrisonChapter Three Get the Words on the Page: Van Morrison as WriterChapter Four Caught One More Time: Themes and ThematicsChapter Five Listening to the Lion: Van Morrison as a SingerChapter Six On the Burning Ground: Liveness and the Recording StudioChapter Seven Down the Road: Van Morrison, Exile, and the Idea of Eternal MovementChapter Eight A Three Cornered Quartet: Van Morrison and the Art of Through CompositionPostscript Make It Real One More Time Again: Astral Weeks LiveAppendix One - The 2006 ShowsAppendix Two - Recording StudiosBibliographyDiscography

Peter Mills is Senior Lecturer in Media & Popular Culture at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK.

"As a highly academic treatment of an artist who deserves as much, Hymns to the Silence is a book that is long overdue, and Peter Mills opens many doors for fellow scholars in a variety of fields:music, literature, Irish studies, among many others. As a comprehensive analysis of Morrison's multi-decade body of work (one that remains very much "in progress" as Iwrite this), Hymns to the Silence should initiate many subsequent conversations across disciplines regarding Morrison's influences, songs, performances, and place in the history of popular music." - John P. McCombe - Popular Music and Society

• Acknowledgments Author's NoteIntroductionChapter One Imagining America: Jazz, Blues, Country, and the Mythologies of the WestChapter Two What Makes the Irish Heart Beat? The Irishness of Van MorrisonChapter Three Get the Words on the Page: Van Morrison as WriterChapter Four Caught One More Time: Themes and ThematicsChapter Five Listening to the Lion: Van Morrison as a SingerChapter Six On the Burning Ground: Liveness and the Recording StudioChapter Seven Down the Road: Van Morrison, Exile, and the Idea of Eternal MovementChapter Eight A Three Cornered Quartet: Van Morrison and the Art of Through CompositionPostscript Make It Real One More Time Again: Astral Weeks LiveAppendix One - The 2006 ShowsAppendix Two - Recording StudiosBibliographyDiscography

Peter Mills is Senior Lecturer in Media & Popular Culture at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK.

"As a highly academic treatment of an artist who deserves as much, Hymns to the Silence is a book that is long overdue, and Peter Mills opens many doors for fellow scholars in a variety of fields:music, literature, Irish studies, among many others. As a comprehensive analysis of Morrison's multi-decade body of work (one that remains very much "in progress" as Iwrite this), Hymns to the Silence should initiate many subsequent conversations across disciplines regarding Morrison's influences, songs, performances, and place in the history of popular music." - John P. McCombe - Popular Music and Society

• Acknowledgments Author's NoteIntroductionChapter One Imagining America: Jazz, Blues, Country, and the Mythologies of the WestChapter Two What Makes the Irish Heart Beat? The Irishness of Van MorrisonChapter Three Get the Words on the Page: Van Morrison as WriterChapter Four Caught One More Time: Themes and ThematicsChapter Five Listening to the Lion: Van Morrison as a SingerChapter Six On the Burning Ground: Liveness and the Recording StudioChapter Seven Down the Road: Van Morrison, Exile, and the Idea of Eternal MovementChapter Eight A Three Cornered Quartet: Van Morrison and the Art of Through CompositionPostscript Make It Real One More Time Again: Astral Weeks LiveAppendix One - The 2006 ShowsAppendix Two - Recording StudiosBibliographyDiscography