Th Metzger – författare

An ax murderer, two of the most brilliant scientific minds of the century, billions of dollars in profit, precedent-setting legal battles, secrets of life and death - all of these come together in the story of the first electric chair.

In Blood and Volts, Th. Metzger creates a unique synthesis of scholarship, storytelling, and cultural critique. Though it draws from a number of disparate fields-true crime, history of technology, conspiracy theory, criminal law-Blood and Volts presents a clear and compelling story: America struggling to define itself through scientific innovation.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, General Electric (using Edison''s direct current) and Westinghouse (employing Tesla''s groundbreaking alternating current) were locked in combat to determine which would dominate the electro-technical fate of the nation. Electricity was thought to be a highly ambiguous force: both godlike creative power and demonic destroyer of life. Metzger argues the electric chair was both harbinger and early pinnacle of modernity, the high altar of the rising cult of progress. In the popular imagination, Tesla and Edison were seen as nearly superhuman beings, and their struggle was not only for wealth and power, but to reshape the face of America.

This is a second, revised edition. 

Sacred Harp singing is a uniquely American synthesis: religion and release, the loud sound of olden times and the joy in the ever-present now, traditional practices that hold together hundreds of raw, raucous human voices. It''s sometimes asked, "Why does the Devil get all the best music?" In this case, God (or as author Th. Metzger claims - the gods) gave to America a wild gift.

Birthed before the U.S. was a nation, ebbing and swelling across the centuries, Sacred Harp singing is not just a collection of old hymns, but a vibrant social phenomenon, drawing in singers from far beyond the church. Driven into rural backwaters, where it hung on during its lean decades, in the twenty-first century, it is experiencing a renaissance, after northerners ventured to get the taste and feel, not just the sound, that has survived in pockets in the Deep South. Free and democratic, this is music for amateurs in the truest sense, that is, for those compelled by love, rather than a desire for money or accolades. Underneath the thin veneer of piety, singers - both old and new - feel a powerful, insistent, heartbeat.

Strong Songs of the Dead is the tale of a journey, not a mere travelog, but venturing back into ancestral time, to that place called by some "That Old Weird America." Th. Metzger goes in with eyes and ears wide open. And he goes deep, in more than one case singing in the heart of the earth, as though to discover the secret subterranean well-springs of the sound. The living and the dead, the lost and the found, strangers and dear friends, join him on this journey.

A streak of darkness runs through Sacred Harp singing; and neither does Strong Songs of the Dead shy away from grief, loss, and longing. Like the songs at the heart of the story, the chapters of Metzger''s memoir are short, plentiful, and unrestrained, yet they all lead to themes of heartfelt living and holy dying. There is tragedy here, but through all that pulses a passionate vitality, an irrepressible cry for life.