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Inside the Rise and Fall of Must See TV
An oral history of a definitive era in television pays tribute to the producers, actors, and programs that established new understandings of broadcast networking, sharing insider perspectives on how NBC subsequently lost its dominant standing.
News and Reviews
A Natural Woman
A Memoir
The legendary, award-winning singer, songwriter and pianist tells her life story — beginning with her childhood in Brooklyn, through her marriage to co-writer Gerry Goffin, her experiences as a mother, and what it was like to write and record Tapestry.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Final Jeopardy
The Story of Watson, The Computer That Will Transform Our World
Follows the quest of a team of scientists to develop a computer so intelligent that it can beat the best of champions in the "Jeopardy" quiz show.
News and Reviews
Chinaberry Sidewalks
Recounts the author's experiences on frontier Houston as the only child of an alcoholic father and epileptic fanatical mother, describing a coming-of-age marked by honky-tonk barroom brawls, apocalyptic hurricanes and wild improvisations in the face of unpaid bills.
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Exorcism
A Play in One Act
Presents a 1920 play of Eugene O'Neill--which revolves around a suicide attempt--believed for more than 90 years to have been lost after O'Neill cancelled production of the show and had seemingly had all copies destroyed.
News and Reviews
On Celestial Music
And Other Adventures In Listening
The author of The Ice Storm and Garden State discusses his love of music and how it inspires his writing, including his infatuation with The Velvet Underground as well as more modern bands such as The Magnetic Fields, Wilco and The Pogues.
News and Reviews
The Patagonian Hare
A Memoir
A first book by the chief editor of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir's Les Temps Modernes traces his life in film and journalism, describing his early experiences as an underground soldier in occupied Paris, his affair with de Beauvoir and the making of his seminal documentary Shoah.
News and Reviews
Joan Myers Brown & the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina
A Biohistory of American Performance
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Zona
A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room
A wide-ranging analysis of Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker describes the author's 30-year fascination with the film and evaluates how it reflects both European cinema and the deepest desires of the human psyche. By the National Book Critics Circle finalist author of Out of Sheer Rage.
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Guitar Zero
The New Musician and the Science of Learning
An NYU professor of psychology describes how he was able to learn to play the guitar in midlife in spite of a limited musical aptitude, revealing what he learned about the brain's capacity for musical proficiency at any time of life and how his findings challenge commonly accepted beliefs about musical talent and training.
News and Reviews
Rin Tin Tin
The Life and the Legend
Susan Orlean chronicles the rise of the iconic German shepherd character, sharing the stories of the real World War I dog and canine performer and exploring Rin Tin Tin's relevance in military and popular culture.NPR Bestseller
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Love Goes to Buildings on Fire
Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever
Chronicles five epochal years of music in the Big Apple against a backdrop of the period's high crime, limited government resources and low rents, tracing the formations of key sounds while evaluating the contributions of such artists as Willie Colón, Bruce Springsteen and Grandmaster Flash.
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Alex Steinweiss
The Inventor of the Modern Album Cover
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The Chitlin' Circuit
And the Road to Rock 'n' Roll
Combining firsthand reporting with historical research, a music journalist provides a musical history of the birth of rock 'n' roll in the black juke joints where James Brown and B.B. King got their start. 17,000 first printing.
News and Reviews
Retromania
Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past
We live in a pop age gone loco for retro and crazy for commemoration. Band re-formations and reunion tours, expanded reissues of classic albums and outtake-crammed box sets, remakes and sequels, tribute albums and mash-ups ... But what happens when we run out of past? Are we heading toward a sort of cultural-ecological catastrophe, where the archival stream of pop history has been exhausted? Retromania is the first book to examine the retro industry and ask the question: Is this retromania a death knell for any originality and distinctiveness of our own?
News and Reviews
Le Freak
An Upside Down Story of Family, Disco, and Destiny
The influential pop music performer and songwriter shares the story of his career, describing his formative experiences in the evolving music scene beside such contemporaries as Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, and Madonna.
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Out of the Vinyl Deeps
Ellen Willis on Rock Music
News and Reviews
Def Jam Recordings
The First 25 Years of the Last Great Record Label
News and Reviews
Electric Eden
Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music
Traces the 1960s effort to revive music in England that underscored the achievements of such period artists as Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, and Led Zeppelin, providing insight into how their work reflected historical precedents.
News and Reviews
Metalion
The Slayer Mag Diaries
Draws on the archives of Slayer Magazine in a photographic treasury that features such classic heavy metal bands as Kreator, Mayhem and Morbid Angel, providing supplemental rare archival material, historical photographs and previously unreleased interviews.
News and Reviews
I Want My MTV
The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution
I Want My MTV shows how the channel grew from a radical programming concept to a defining network for a generation and a force in the worlds of music, television, sports, fashion and politics.
News and Reviews
Everybody Loves Our Town
An Oral History of Grunge
A tribute to the Pacific Northwest's grunge genre draws on the observations of individuals at the forefront of the movement from Soundgarden and the Melvins to Nirvana and Pearl Jam, citing the influences of such factors as the rise of Seattle's Sub Pop record label and the death of Kurt Cobain.
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The World of Downton Abbey
A companion book to the popular British series, which also aired in the United States on PBS, includes full-color photos throughout.
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Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?
A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir
The frontman of the classic rock band Aerosmith tells his story, including his rise to rock stardom in the 70s, the band's drop in popularity, and their comeback in the late 80s and 90s. (biography & autobiography). Simultaneous.
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Fever
Little Willie John, A Fast Life, Mysterious Death and the Birth of Soul
Recounts the life of the man who invented soul music and is best known for his popular music chart successes, including "All Around the World" (1955), "Need Your Love So Bad" (1956) and "Fever" the same year.
News and Reviews
Everything Is an Afterthought
The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson
Presents the life and career of the music journalism pioneer, who championed the early careers of such musicians as Bob Dylan and the New York Dolls, but fell into obscurity after abruptly leaving the profession.
News and Reviews
100 Cult Films
A guide to 100 of most compelling films to draw a faithful following. From mainstream hits like The Sound of Music to Italian cannibal movies like Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, film scholars Ernest Mathijs and Xavier Mendik tell the stories of these strange classics.
News and Reviews
1950s Radio in Color
The Lost Photographs of Deejay Tommy Edwards
Collection of color photos by the Cleveland DJ of early rock and pop stars.
News and Reviews
Apollo's Angels
A History of Ballet
Unique among the arts, ballet has no written texts or standardized notation. It is a storytelling art passed on from teacher to student. A ballerina dancing today is a link in a long chain of dancers stretching back to sixteenth-century Italy and France: Her graceful movements recall a lost world of courts, kings, and aristocracy, but her steps are also marked by the dramatic changes in dance and culture that followed. From ballet's origins in the Renaissance and the codification of its basic steps and positions under France's Louis XIV (himself an avid dancer), the art form wound its way through the courts of Europe, from Paris and Milan to Vienna and St. Petersburg. Jennifer Homans, a historian and critic who was also a professional dancer, traces the evolution of technique, choreography, and performance in clear prose, drawing readers into the intricacies of the art with vivid descriptions of dances and the artists who made them--From publisher description.
