History & Criticism

A monumental, revealing narrative history about the legendary group of artists at the forefront of West Coast hip-hop: Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, and Tupac Shakur....

“Paul is dead.” It was the late 1960's, the Beatles hadn’t toured since 1966, and some truly bizarre indications began appearing, pointing to the unthinkable: Paul McCartney had been killed in a car accident and replaced by a look-alike.... 

The story of the phenomenon that is Kraftwerk, and how they revolutionised our cultural landscape....   

At once the most lucrative, popular, and culturally oppositional musical force in the United States, hip-hop demands the kind of interpretation Imani Perry provides here....

This classic book is the whole unruly story of dance music in one volume. It recreates the dance floors that made history, conjuring their atmosphere with loving detail and bringing you the voices of the DJs and clubbers at their heart....

Dan Hancox tells the remarkable story of how a group of outsiders from the margins of urban life went on to create a genre that has become a British institution. Here, for the first time, is the full story of grime....

Not for You is the first full-length treatment of Pearl Jam's odyssey and importance in the culture, from the '90s to the present....

With astounding access to all the key players of the time, including members of Green Day, The Offspring, Rancid, Bad Religion, Social Distortion, and many others, music writer Ian Winwood at last gives the significant, substantive, and compelling story of '90s punk rock its due....

John Eliot Gardiner takes us as deeply into Bach’s works and mind as perhaps words can. The result is a unique book about one of the greatest of all creative artists....

Best-selling author and Sundance award-winning director Questlove offers a thrilling, music-driven ride through the last 50 years of American history....

Joel Selvin tells the definitive story of the Rolling Stones' infamous Altamont concert in San Francisco, the disastrous historic event that marked the end of the idealistic 1960s....

I was 22 years old, a hard-on with a pulse: wretched vice-ridden, too much to burn and not enough minutes in a hour to do so....

Maximum Volume offers a glimpse into the mind, the music, and the man behind the sound of the Beatles....

Here is the extreme story of the indestructible LA group, from their early funk days to eventual success as one of America’s top-selling bands.....

Nearly 20 years in the making, Can't Buy Me Love is a masterful work of group biography, cultural history, and musical criticism....

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

Joe Boyd tells of his journey through Sixties music, from tour managing Muddy Waters and Coleman Hawkins to becoming a leading record producer....

One fateful evening, journalist Eric Siblin attended a recital of Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suites and began an epic quest that would unravel three centuries of intrigue, politics, and passion....

Filled with interviews with key players such as Snoop Dogg, Ice-T, and dozens more, as well as breakout bios of notorious characters, lists, and more, The History of Gangster Rap is the be-all-end-all book that contextualizes the importance of gangster rap as a cultural phenomenon....

Today music fills our lives. How we have created, performed and listened to this music throughout history has defined what our species is and how we understand who we are. Yet music is an overlooked part of our origin story....

From his school days in Stoke -on-Trent to his years in Take That, his battle with drink and drugs and the song that 'saved his life'....