Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumphs of Graceland

Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumphs of Graceland

$36.00

Review Quotes: "A great American songwriter, a joyful South African music, a repressive government, international protests, and 1980s attitudes produced a clash of art and ethics thoroughly documented by Ashley Kahn." --Nelson George, NBCC finalist...

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Review Quotes:
"A great American songwriter, a joyful South African music, a repressive government, international protests, and 1980s attitudes produced a clash of art and ethics thoroughly documented by Ashley Kahn."
--Nelson George, NBCC finalist for The Death of Rhythm and Blues

Review Quotes:
" Graceland remains one of the most intriguing (and misunderstood) of the blockbuster 1980s albums. It is immediately accessible, universally adored, and likely to endure forever. Ashley Kahn asks every question--political, musical, and aesthetic--that you might want answered about the record, its reception, and its legacy, with sensitive attention to detail, nuance and the artistic process."
--Matt Thorne, Booker Prize-nominated author of Prince: The Man and His Music

Biographical Note:
Ashley Kahn is a Grammy Award-winning music historian, author, and producer. He cowrote Carlos Santana's autobiography The Universal Tone, and has written books on such legendary recordings as Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and A Love Supreme by John Coltrane. He was a member of the Graceland tour production team, and tour manager for Ladysmith Black Mambazo. He teaches at New York University's Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music.


Review Quotes:
"Ashley Kahn's Days of Miracle and Wonder--like its subject, Paul Simon's Graceland--represents a pinnacle of its form: a syncretic work of art that shows its author's mastery of all of popular music's moving parts: the musical, the technological, the historical, the socio-political, the commercial, the biographical. Like its subject, it delivers nuance and provocation. In the midst of larger struggles for rights, it asks what rights artists themselves have. And it shows that great art has unintended consequences beyond the conceptions and intentions of its creators."
--Dan Charnas, New York Times bestselling author of Dilla Time

"Great stories come alive with details and Kahn has a gold-digger's eye for the gems that make this a gripping and inspiring book. Graceland is now part of the world's soundtrack, but learning how Simon brought it to life on disc and on stage, and how he dealt unflinchingly with the attacks and setbacks, is extraordinary and very moving. I thought I knew most of the story of Graceland, but that opinion shrank with every page I turned."
--Joe Boyd, acclaimed music producer and award-winning author of And the Roots of Rhythm Remain

Publisher Marketing:
The definitive story of the making and legacy of Graceland, Paul Simon's still-beloved, career-topping 1986 album, drawn from extensive research and exclusive interviews with nearly 100 participants and witnesses: musicians, producers, engineers, record executives and journalists from Africa, the US, and Europe.

In 1984, Paul Simon was at a professional and personal crossroads. His new marriage was failing and his career was in danger of stalling. He was forty-two, navigating a digital age, searching for inspiration in a scene driven by music videos, synthesizers, and drum machines.

Driving around that summer, a bootleg cassette of "township jive"--the street music of South Africa--kept him company. Lent to him by a friend, it reminded Simon of the sound and the joy of the early days of rock and roll. He began to invent his own lyrics to the groove, and became drawn to the idea of recording with the musicians on that tape. But South Africa was in the thrall of a racist apartheid system, and with economic and cultural boycotts in place, such an undertaking was risky. He grew determined to find the right conditions to allow for a collaboration.

Simon took a fateful trip to Johannesburg in 1985. It would turn out to be the first step on a musical journey that would lead him to New York, Los Angeles, Louisiana, and London, and eventually to the release of Graceland, a critical and commercial triumph, winning multiple Grammys, selling 16 million records, and spawning a five-year, worldwide tour.

Days of Miracle and Wonder is the first book to tell the full story of Graceland, offering windows into Simon's creative process, the technical innovations that brought his songs to life, the people and places that made the album possible, the forces that helped the album achieve mainstream reach, and the controversies that the music raised--and which remain today. It sheds light on a period when America opened its doors to the sounds and styles of Africa and other faraway lands.

This is an informed, heartfelt celebration of Simon's magnum opus, a recording forged in a tense cultural moment, but suffused with hope, change, and a sense of global connection.

Review Citations:

  • Publishers Weekly 06/01/2026 (EAN 9781668206751, Hardcover)
  • Library Journal 07/01/2026 pg. 61 (EAN 9781668206751, Hardcover) - *Starred Review
  • Kirkus Reviews 07/01/2026 (EAN 9781668206751, Hardcover) - *Starred Review

Contributor Bio:Kahn, Ashley
Ashley Kahn is a Grammy Award-winning music historian, author, and producer. He cowrote Carlos Santana's autobiography The Universal Tone, and has written books on such legendary recordings as Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and A Love Supreme by John Coltrane. He was a member of the Graceland tour production team, and tour manager for Ladysmith Black Mambazo. He teaches at New York University's Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music.