No LA fan could be without this book. The bio part is excellent and gives another dimensions to the artist we love, the photos are great (Laurie with long hair!) and it has lyrics for hard-to-find songs.
I would have been a little bit more happy (and given 8 stars) if EVERY lyric, poem or shopping list Laurie wrote was here, but, well, I am asking too much.
Spend your money here, you won-t be dissapointed.

If it says Laurie Anderson on it I'll probably buy it. This is just another example of the great work they both work towards and accomplish.. If i may digress, the first time I heard Laurie was at a party before Big Science was released. Rick Wakeman (YES) was the guest DJ at the radio station..Talk about a brick wall ! the party came to a complete standstill during O Superman. I swear nobody said a word except for wow! As far as this book goes..yeah get it before it gets hard to find..United States is hard to find now, and its a great companion to United States Live (the CD)

Blend a social history with a fine survey of complete panoramas and you have an elegant, sophisticated presentation. Roselee Goldberg's Laurie Anderson covers the works of the multi-media performance artist/pop star, moving beyond her rock image to establish her skills in art and performance pieces alike.

Goldberg's is an excellent, well-researched, and interesting text that documents the history of a most misunderstood medium: performance art. Proceeding in a sure-footed way from the early, combative, theatrical efforts of the Italian Futurists, then to Dadaism, then on to the dances of Oskar Schlemmer, to the 1960s "happenings", up until the end of the 1980s...Goldberg covers it all. She gives essential and pertinent cultural information that facilitates the reader's understanding of the "how" and the "why" of performance art. This book is a must-have for art and cultural historians, as well as anyone who wants to broaden their knowledge of the key figures and events relating to art of the modern and postmodern eras.

I have been a fan of RoseLee Goldberg's books for years, but she really has out-done herself with this visually stunning book. She has captured the essence of performance pictorially without diluting the "live-art" aspect of it. Some of her chapters could be called mini-performances, themselves. Goldberg organizes her subject into conceptual chapters that keep the material from falling into strictly a popular phenomenon. A must buy for academics and non-academics alike. A great Christmas gift for an art lover. The pictures in this book are gorgeous and fun. A real treat.