Ordering Information
$25.00, 6 x 9, softcover, 210 pages, 25 b/w images
ISBN: 978-1-942155-55-3
Publication date: May 1, 2023
Gold Winner of the 2024 IBPA Book Award in Regional category
Bronze Winner in the 2023 Foreword Indies in Performing Arts category
To order copies visit Casemate IPM.
All Join Hands
Dudley Laufman & The New England Country Dance Tradition
By Tom Curren
Praise for All Join Hands:
“Clarifies the fascinating history of contra dance, and at the same time delves into the social history that accompanies its evolution. The prose style, lucid and readable, is on its own reason enough to cherish this book.”
—Sydney Lea, Vermont Poet Laureate, 2011-2015
“Curren has put all lovers of New England country dancing into the grans sweep of cultural and political history, with Dudley Laufman’s story as linchpin.”
—Greg Boardman, founder, Maine Fiddle Camp; Maine Country Fiddle Workshop
“Tom Curren has done a brilliant job here, weaving an engaging narrative of how Dudley Laufman coordinated and energized the amazing resurgence of an ancient art form—the contradance/square dance—in New England and beyond.”
—Tom Rush, Singer/songwriter
Author’s Bio:
Tom Curren is a writer, farmer, conservationist, and an historian who lives in New Hampshire with his wife, folklorist Kathy Neustadt. Since the 1970s, Tom has had an extensive career writing and speaking about New England culture, life and landscape. He has written four local town histories as well as the statewide account of Old Home Day. As part of the singing group “The Good Old Plough” he has appeared at dozens of historical societies around the state, at the Shelburne Museum, on NBC’s “Good Morning America,” and well as in special performances on New Hampshire’s Channel 11 Educational Television Channel and on WEVO, New Hampshire Public Radio. He gives presentations at local historical societies and similar gatherings throughout the region.
Tom recently published a history of the Boston-Cambridge folk music revival titled I Believe I’ll Go Back Home, about which the national Library Journal said: “Ultimately, the book is about America writ large, the power of our best (and worst) selves, and the role of music in inspiring, reflecting, and recovering the ideals of various times and people. In this time of discord, Curren hits exactly the right note.”
