Best Music History Books

Whether you load your iPod with Bach or Bono, music has a significant role in your life—even if you never realized it. Why does music evoke such powerful moods The answers are at last be coming clear, thanks to revolutionary neuroscience and the emerging field of evolutionary…

“Writing about yourself is a funny business…But in a project like this, the writer has made one promise, to show the reader his mind.

Updated with a new chapter on digital curation How Music Works is 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.

One of Justin Boreta's most-gifted or recommended books.

The longawaited autobiography of the guitarist, songwriter, singer, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. Ladies and gentlemen: Keith Richards.With The Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the songs that roused the world, and he lived the original rock and roll life.Now,…

A Time Out and Daily News Top Ten Book of the Year upon its initial release, Please Kill Me is the first oral history of the most nihilist of all pop movements.

Peter Guralnick delivers long, affectionate profiles that stitch artists’ careers, regional scenes, and record‑industry moments into immersive storytelling. The prose is anecdote‑rich and moves at a leisurely pace; readers who like narrative reporting and music lore will find it rewarding. Main value is detailed scene‑setting and life portraiture that make recording sessions and personalities feel present. Main limitation is repetition and limited synthesis—the book accumulates vivid stories but often refrains from stepping back to redraw the larger social or stylistic map.

Here is Jim Morrison in all his complexitysinger, philosopher, poet, delinquentthe brilliant, charismatic, and obsessed seeker who rejected authority in any form, the explorer who probed "the bounds of reality to see what would happen..." Seven years in the writing, this…

Fargo Rock City is a voice-first memoir packed with punchy anecdotes, pop-culture lists, and small-town recollections of growing up a metalhead. Its useful part is comic, detail-rich storytelling that makes teenage fandom feel immediate and ridiculous in equal measure. Expect smart-alecky asides and lots of specific musical minutiae that trigger nostalgia. The main limitation is a meandering chapter structure—frequent detours and repeating riffs can feel indulgent or repetitive if you want a focused, linear argument.

"I'd come from a long ways off and had started a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else." So writes Bob Dylan in Chronicles: Volume One, his remarkable book exploring critical junctures in his life and…