History & Criticism

In this intimate and open account—nothing like any rock-and-roll memoir you’ve ever read—Alex Van Halen shares his personal story of family, friendship, music and brotherly love in a remarkable tribute to his beloved brother and band mate.

On the evening of July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan took the stage at Newport Folk Festival, backed by an electric band, and roared into his new rock hit, "Like a Rolling Stone"....

In his second New York Times best seller, Daniel J. Levitin's genius for combining science and art reveals how music shaped humanity across cultures and throughout history....

A stunning, in-depth look at the power and poetry of one of the most consequential rappers of our time....

Revised and updated with new material for fans of the band and this beloved rock classic, Hammer of the Gods is the gold-standard biography of the band Led Zeppelin.

David Byrne’s incisive and enthusiastic look at the musical art form, from its very inceptions to the influences that shape it, whether acoustical, economic, social, or technological, is now updated with a new chapter on digital curation.

In the second half of the 20th century New York was the source of new sounds, including the Greenwich Village folk scene....

Discovered at last, the legendary lost manuscript of Grateful Dead co-founder and primary lyricist Robert Hunter, written in the early 1960s—a wry, richly observed, and enlightening remembrance of “the scene” in Palo Alto that gave rise to an incredible partnership of Hunter and Jerry Garcia.

In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others—Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times....

Fleetwood Mac's classic 1977 Rumours album topped the Billboard 200 for 31 weeks and won the Album of the Year Grammy....

From 1965 to 1995, the Grateful Dead flourished as one of the most beloved, unusual, and accomplished musical entities to ever grace American culture....

The definitive, no-holds-barred oral history of 1990s alt-rock festival Lollapalooza―told by the musicians, roadies, and industry insiders who lived it. From the New York Times bestselling authors of Nothin’ But A Good Time.

From the creator of the acclaimed country music history podcast Cocaine & Rhinestones, comes the epic American saga of country music’s legendary royal couple—George Jones and Tammy Wynette.

An energetic and explosive oral history examining emo’s pop culture takeover from 1999-2008, featuring exclusive interviews with My Chemical Romance’s Mikey Way and Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz and Patrick Stump....

Legendary rock journalist Mick Wall delivers definitive insight into America's bestselling band of all time, exploring their meteoric rise to fame and the hedonistic days of the '70s music scene in LA, when American music was taking over the world....

From Pieces to Weight: Once Upon a Time in Southside Queens is a violent and introspective memoir that reveals not only 50 Cent's story but the story of a generation....

Tune In is the first volume of All These Years - a highly-anticipated, groundbreaking biographical trilogy....

Drawing from her successful career as a music producer (engineering hits like Prince’s “Purple Rain”), professor of cognitive neuroscience Susan Rogers reveals why your favorite songs move you....

An exuberant, uniquely accessible look inside the enigmatic art and craft of conducting, from a celebrated conductor whose international career has spanned half a century....

After more than two decades of research and travels, Christophe Lebold, who befriended the poet and spent time with him in Los Angeles, delivers a stimulating analysis of Cohen’s life and art.

This is the story of an important period in rock music, but also of the harsher results of the sixties....

Grunge Is Dead weaves together the definitive story of the Seattle music scene through a series of interviews with the people who were there....

From the legendary producer of Nick Drake, R.E.M., Toots and the Maytals, and Pink Floyd and author of White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s comes a riveting, world-spanning tour de force illuminating the artists, histories, controversies, and collaborations that shaped global music.

Led Zeppelin rose to become one of the biggest-selling rock bands of all time....

The author of the critically acclaimed Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me offers an eye-opening and frank assessment of the state of classic rock, assessing the impact it has had, and what its loss would mean to an industry and a culture....

You can’t truly understand the last decade of the 20th century without a look at the muddy, electrifying rock music that would come to define it: grunge. For such a short-lived genre—at least in the mainstream—grunge had a lasting impact on American music and culture. It also provides a unique lens through which to examine the post-Reagan, pre-internet America of the 1990s. In the six lectures of The Story of Grunge, you’ll explore the rise and evolution of the genre, tracing it from Seattle subculture to MTV and the Billboard charts, all the way to its decline and evolution into new forms.

Welcome to the electrifying world of K-pop! From its origins in a once-overlooked corner of Asia to today's global superstars like BTS and BLACKPINK, discover how South Korea built an entertainment empire that's revolutionizing modern culture. This comprehensive guide reveals the fascinating story behind K-pop's meteoric rise and lasting impact.

Jon Savage, the author of the canonical England's Dreaming, explodes new ground in this electrifying history of pop music from 1955 through 1979. In demonstrating that gay and lesbian artists were responsible for many of the greatest cultural breakthroughs in the last half of the twentieth century, he shows that it was their secretly encoded music—appealing to a closeted but greatly oppressed public—which led to the historic dismantling of discriminatory gay laws and the fusion of queer and straight culture.

In this artful memoir, Grammy Award-winning music producer Charlie Peacock flexes his literary chops and gives listeners the gritty backstage stories they crave: biographical anecdotes, geeky trivia, and how the hits were written and recorded (from jazz to rock and pop). Threaded throughout is Peacock’s unique ancestral and spiritual story—the roots. Like Coltrane, Dylan, and Bono before him, Peacock reveals a Christ-affection while refusing genres too small for his music.

In 2018, during an interview with journalist Tanya Pearson, Shirley Manson lamented: "It’s a blanket fact that after September 11th, nonconformist women were taken off the radio.” This comment echoed a reality Pearson had personally witnessed as a musician and a fan, and launched her into a quest to figure out just what happened to these extraordinary female figures. Pretend We’re Dead seeks to answer two big questions.