About the book: Andy Gibb was one of the biggest pop stars of the disco era.
His first three singles - "I Just Want To Be Your Everything," "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water," and "Shadow Dancing" - reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 during 1977-78, and he became a fixture on television specials, appearing alongside legends such as Bob Hope, George Burns, and Dean Martin.
In 1981, he became the co-host of the iconic Solid Gold television series, and a year later he starred in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on Broadway.
But despite his enormous success, he battled with insecurity, depression, and substance abuse, causing his career to flounder and leaving him bankrupt by 1987. By then, he seemed ready to start anew and launch a comeback, but he died suddenly in 1988, five days after his thirtieth birthday.
Despite the tragic brevity of his career and life, Andy Gibb still has a strong fan base around the world, but his story has never been told - until now.
Arrow Through the Heart: The Biography of Andy Gibb (2022) draws upon extensive research, rare archival interviews with Andy Gibb and members of his family, and interviews conducted by the author with nearly fifty of Andy's friends and associates to examine the life and career of this beloved pop idol.
"Arrow Through The Heart" was the final song recorded by singer-songwriter Andy Gibb before his death in 1988. The song was publicly released in its entirety for the first time on the Bee Gees' 2010 compilation box set Mythology.
About the author: Matthew Hild is a lecturer of history, specializing in southern history and US labour history and agricultural history. He earned his PhD from Georgia Tech’s School of History, Technology, and Society (now called the School of History and Sociology) in 2003. He is the author of Greenbackers, Knights of Labor, and Populists: Farmer-Labor Insurgency in the Late–Nineteenth-Century South (University of Georgia Press, 2007) and Arkansas's Gilded Age: The Rise, Decline, and Legacy of Populism and Working-Class Protest (University of Missouri Press, 2018). The latter won the Arkansas Historical Association's J.G. Ragsdale Book of the Year Award in 2019.
He is also the co-author (with fellow HSOC/HTS PhD alumnus David L. Morton) of Georgia Tech (Campus History), published by Arcadia Publishing in 2018. He is the co-editor of and a contributing co-author (with Keri Leigh Merritt) to Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power (University Press of Florida, 2018), which won the United Association for Labor Education's Award for the Best Book Related to Labor Education in 2019.
He is also the co-editor (with Michael Gagnon) of and a contributing author to Gwinnett County, Georgia, and the Transformation of the American South, 1818-2018 (University of Georgia Press, 2022).
Courses that he has taught include US History to 1877, US History since 1877, History of the New South, US Labor History, America in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Modern America, Science and Technology in the Modern World, Technology and Science in the Industrial Age, and Engineering in History. He lives in Georgia.
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