"In The Return of Jazz, Andrew Wright Hurley has admirably demonstrated Berendt"s influence upon the emerging jazz scene of the early Federal Republic. Hurley shows how Cold War politics and rejection of the National Socialist past heightened Berendt"s sense of mission. For Berendt, jazz was more than an avocation; it was a program for social and cultural reform. It is to Hurley"s credit that he raises so many important issues surrounding jazz"s development in the second half of the twentieth century." - H-German "This is a benchmark study, in showing why a subject that has been overlooked in jazz historiography should not have been. Its importance lies not just in recognising the importance of a major mediator and "enabler" of postwar jazz; it also models the late twentieth century shift of the jazz centre of gravity away from the US and towards international fusions. In its balancing of cultural theory with the most painstaking empirical research this is, quite simply, essential...