Festivals

The Complete Monterey Pop Festival- Criterion Collection [Blu-ray]
$69.98
This is $34.99 at Barnes and Noble. Why Amazon doesn't price match I do not know. However, Amazon has matched a few of the Barnes and Noble Criterion Blu-Rays. Wings Of Desire for example.

Festivals Family and Food
$22.00
This book is full of good old-fashioned information for embracing yearly celebrations, however I did not find it enjoyable to read (because of it's outdated format) in comparison to the other books from 'Hawthorn Press' I have been enjoying.

World Party: The Rough Guide to the World's Best Festivals
$24.99
I been closely involved with a number of the festivals discussed in this book (Trinidad Carnival, NY Village Halloween Parade, Mardi Gras, and various Hindu/Buddhist festivals in Nepal). It provides a useful gloss for someone wishing to plan festival travels, and most of the basic information is helpful. However, this book is filled with inaccuracies, omissions, and misleading statements. Clearly it is hard to do justice to the cultural complexity and history of some festivals in a few pages, but in certain cases the authors' emphasis partying, drinking, and "shagging" comes at the expense of offering a cultural and historical context for these festivals. I think this approach is just fine for rock festivals, but it does a real disservice to 1000-year old ritual events which have been diluted and endangered in recent years by tourists just looking for a good time. Festivals in this context reveal important and ancient local narratives, through layered symbolic imagery, ritual procession, costume and mask, and music and dance. World Party seems only secondarily interested in these narratives, and contributes unwittingly and irresponsibly to their decline.

In short, use this book to plan a trip, identify where you want to go and to help with logistics. But look elsewhere for any kind of genuine understanding of what you will experience. You owe that much to the cultures you are visiting. As a start I recommend books by Max Harris on Christian Festivals, and Barbara Mauldin's book on Carnaval.

Festivals
$17.95
Combining poetry and full-color paintings, the companion volume to Celebrations takes a close up look at fourteen multicultural festivals, from the Chinese New Year to Kwanzaa.