The Last Holiday: A Memoir - Hardcover

Praise for The Last Holiday

"Leave it to Scott-Heron to save some of his best for last. This posthumously published memoir, The Last Holiday, is an elegiac culmination to his musical and literary career. He's a real writer, a word man, and it is as wriggling and vital in its way as Bob Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One."--Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"A singular triumph. . . . It's [Scott-Heron's] humility, combined with his gift for charming, unforced prose, that makes The Last Holiday such a fascinating memoir. . . . In 'Home Is Where the Hatred Is, ' Scott-Heron sang, 'God, but did you ever try / To turn your sick soul inside out / So that the world ... can watch you die?' Most of us haven't; most of us have never had that kind of desperate courage. Gil Scott-Heron did, baring his imperfect soul to the world for decades. We're poorer for his loss, but richer for his words."--Michael Schaub, NPR.org

"Striking. . . . Vivid. . . . [Scott-Heron's] memoir is distinguished by the beauty of his images."--Rob Tannenbaum, Rolling Stone (four-star review)

"Gil Scott-Heron's posthumous memoir, The Last Holiday, plays back the life of a musician whose scorching political writings and recordings reflected the social injustice faced by African-Americans, inspiring today's rappers."--Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair

"His tales of growing up in the South and North, of emerging as a writer and then as a singer and musician, are blunt, funny, caustic, fair-minded and occasionally loopy, just like his music."--Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"Much like his poetry, Scott-Heron's style is spare and effective, offering up jagged observations on fame, friendship and political and racial injustice. . . . Engaging and immensely human. And it is made all the more affecting with the knowledge of the calamities that were yet to come."--Fiona Sturges, The Independent (UK)

"Even after his death, Scott-Heron continues to mesmerize us in this brilliant and lyrical romp through the fields of his life. . . . [a] captivating memoir."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Praise for Gil Scott-Heron

"Gil Scott-Heron [was] a poet and polemicist whose lyrics have inspired and galvanized generations."--GQ

"Gil Scott-Heron is timeless."--The New York Times

"[Gil Scott-Heron] was a warm, sensitive, altruistic and highly complex man whose music, lyrics and poetry will continue to inspire."--The Independent (UK)

"Gil Scott-Heron, who died on May 27, 2011, aged sixty-two, was a composer, musician, poet, and author whose writings and recordings provided a vivid, and often stinging, commentary on social injustice and the black American experience; his declamatory singing style, allied to the overtly political content of his work, made him widely recognized as one of the inspirational figures of rap music. . . . Scott-Heron refined an intoxicating hybrid of jazz, Latin, and Afro idioms that established him in the vanguard of black American music in the 1970s."--The Telegraph (UK)

A personal account by the late rap artist and poet best known for such iconic singles as "Home Is Where the Hatred Is" and "B Movie" traces the story of his life, career and history-making 1981 tour at the side of Stevie Wonder to raise support for the establishment of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.