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Biography of a Phantom: A Robert Johnson Blues Odyssey. By Robert Mack McCormick. Ed. by John W. Troutman. Apr. 2023.264P. Smithsonian, $29.95 (9781588347343). 782.4216. A lot of legwork went into [...]

Looking to Get Lost: Adventures in Music and Writing. By Peter Guralnick. Oct. 2020. 576p. Little, Brown, $30 (9780316412629); e-book, $15.99 (9780316412643). 780. Just as their discovery of the blues [...]

Freedom. By Sebastian Junger. May 2021. 160p. Simon & Schuster, $25.99 (9781982153410). 323.440973. Journalist and filmmaker Junger (Tribe, 2016) returns to the fertile ground of male camaraderie and the pushing [...]

* Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice, 1967-1975. By Richard Thompson and Scott Timberg. Apr. 2021.304p. Algonquin, $26.99 (9781616208950); e book, $19.95 (9781643751702). 782.42166. Thompson has a reputation [...]

Robot Artists and Black Swans: The Italian Fantascienza Stories. By Bruce Sterling. Mar. 2021. 256p. Tachyon, $25.95 (9781616963293); e-book, $9.99 (9781616963309). Sterling is a visionary, equally at home writing about [...]

Brother Robert: Growing Up with Robert Johnson. By Annye C. Anderson. June 2020. 224p. Da Capo, $28 (9780306845260); e-book, $14.99 (9780306845277). 782.421643. The last time Anderson saw Brother Robert was [...]

Agency. By William Gibson. Jan. 2020.416p. Berkley, $28 (9781101986936). Hired to beta test a new AI called Eunice (think a cross between Alexa and Google Glass on steroids), 'app whisperer' [...]

Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson. By Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow. June 2019. 320p. Chicago Review/A Cappella, $30 (9781641600941). With this title, one might [...]

Working at Booklist is predominantly a solitary occupation--reading, writing, and editing are not intrinsically collaborative endeavors. I do feel like I know plenty about my colleagues, however, and I owe [...]

Johnny Cash: The Life and Legacy of the Man in Black. By Alan Light. Oct. 2018.224p. illus. Smithsonian, $40 (9781588346391). 782.4216. Almost biblical with his deep baritone and stoic demeanor [...]

Help! The Beatles, Duke Ellington, and the Magic of Collaboration. By Thomas Brothers. Oct. 2018.368p. Norton, $27.95 (9780393246230). 781.65092. While Duke Ellington (and his publicists) have cultivated a myth of [...]

The Promise of the Grand Canyon: John Wesley Powell's Perilous Journey and His Vision for the American West. By John F. Ross. July 2018. 400p. illus. Viking, $30 (9780525429876). 917.91. [...]

Paul Simon. By Robert Hilburn. May 2018. 448p. Simon & Schuster, $30 (9781501112126).782.421660. Simon discovered rock and roll when he heard DJ Alan Freed on WINS, the radio station which [...]

Homeward Bound: The Life of Paul Simon. By Peter Ames Carlin. Oct. 2016.432p. illus. Holt, $32 (9781627790345). 782.421. While attending Forest Hill High School, under the moniker Tom and Jerry, [...]

Love for Sale: Pop Music in America. By David Hajdu. Oct. 2016. 320p. Farrar, $27 (9780374170530). 781.64. Music critic Hajdu's (Positively 4th Street, 2001) deft examination of the history and [...]

Everything's Bigger in Texas: The Life & Times of Kinky Friedman. By Mary Lou Sullivan. Nov. 2017.344p. Backbeat, $29.99 (9781495058967). 782.421642092. Before he was a regular columnist for Texas Monthly, [...]

* Electric Shock: From the Gramophone to the iPhone--125 Years of Pop Music. By Peter Doggett. Oct. 2017. 736p. Vintage, paper, $19.95 (9780099575191). 781.6409. Doggett has set himself the seemingly [...]

Smithsonian Rock and Roll: Live and Unseen. By Bill Bentley. Oct. 2017. 216p. illus. Smithsonian, $40 (9781588346001). 781.66092. In 2015, Smithsonian Books, an imprint of the venerable national institution, launched [...]

Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty. By Ben Ratliff. Feb. 2016. 272p. Farrar, $26 (9780374277901); e-book (9781429953597). 781.1. In this age of access [...]

What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man. By Art Garfunkel. Sept. 2017. 256p. illus. Knopf, $27.95 (9780385352475). 782. At an early age, Garfunkel wowed his classmates, [...]

* Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black & White, Body and Soul in American Music. By Ann Powers. Aug. 2017.416p. Morrow/Dey St., $26.99 (9780062463692). 780.973. The appropriation of other cultures [...]

Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology. By Ellen Ullman. Aug. 2017. 320p. Farrar, $26 (9780374534516). 600. Entering the predominantly male profession of computer programming, Ullman armed herself with [...]

Notes from the Velvet Underground: The Life of Lou Reed. By Howard Sounes. June 2017.416p. illus. Doubleday, $34.95 (9780857522665). 782.42. Lou Reed's literary and frank song-writing introduced mature subject matter [...]

Billie Holiday at Sugar Hill. By Jerry Dantzic and Grayson Dantzic. May 2017.144p. illus. Thames & Hudson, $40 (9780500544655). 782.42165092. On assignment from Decca Records, photographer Jerry Dantzic took his [...]

Everybody Had an Ocean: Music and Mayhem in 1960s Los Angeles. By William McKeen. Apr. 2017.432p. Chicago Review, $26.99 (9781613734919). 781.6609794. Home to Hollywood scandals, tabloid murders, and surf music, [...]

Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff. By Michael lllesmith. Apr. 2017.352p. illus. Crown Archetype, $28 (9781101907504). 782.4. Nesmith recounts how he moved to L.A. and started playing music despite having limited […]

Bit Rot. By Douglas Coupland. Mar. 2017.432p. Penguin/Blue Rider, $26 (9780399575808). 800. Smart, prolific, and funny, Coupland [Worst. Person. Ever., 2014) has collected dozens of essays and short stories, post-2005, [...]

Pirate Utopia. By Bruce Sterling. Nov. 2016.192p. illus. Tachyon, $19.95 (9781616962364); e-book, $9.99 (9781616962395). After the Great War, the Adriatic seaport city of Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia) became an autonomous [...]

Being Elvis. By Ray Connolly. Dec. 2016.368p. illus. Norton/Liveright, $27.95 (9781631492808). 782.421. At the height of his success in Hollywood, from 1962 to '67, Elvis was putting out a movie [...]

The History of Rock & Roll: Volume One, 1920-1963. By Ed Ward. Nov. 2016.416p. Ratiron, $35 (9781250071170). 781. Ward's ambitious opus succeeds in chronicling the first half of the history [...]

A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton from Box Tops to Big Star to Backdoor Man. By Holly George-Warren. Mar. 2014. 354p.Viking, $27.95 (9780670025633). 782.421. After [...]

Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy. By Mike Love and James S. Hirsch. Sept. 2016. 448p. Penguin/Blue Rider, $28 (9780399176418): e-book, $ 13.99 (9780698408869). 782.421. I Am Brian [...]

Uproot: Travels in 21st-Century Music and Digital Culture. By Jace Clayton. Aug. 2016. 288p. Farrar, paper, $15 (9780374533427). 781.64. As the globe-trotting DJ Rupture, Clayton has performed in more than [...]

They Call Me Supermensch: My Amazing Adventures in Rock V Roll, Hollywood, and Haute Cuisine. By Shep Gordon. Sept. 2016.304p. illus. Ecco, $25.99 (9780062355959). 791. Mike Myers told Gordon's story [...]

Stanley Kubrick and Me: Thirty Years at His Side. By Emilio D'Alessandro and Filippo Ulivieri. Tr. by Simon Marsh. May 2016. 352p. Arcade, $27.99 (9781628726695). 791.43. Prior to being hired [...]

Screamin' Jay Hawkins' All-Time Greatest Hits. By Mark Binelli. May 2016. 224p. illus. Metro, $26 (9781627795357). The success of 'I Put a Spell on You' sent Screamin' Jay Hawkins on [...]

Porcelain. By Moby. Mar. 2016.416p. Penguin, $27.95 (9781594206429). 781. Moby gave up drinking to become a straightedge, vegan Christian. Poor but smug, he ran bible-study sessions for wealthy, young Christians [...]

Every Anxious Wave. By Mo Daviau. Feb. 2016. 288p. St. Martin's, $25.99 (9781250067494). The use of time travel in fiction requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief. In Daviau's [...]

* Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock V Roll. By Peter Guralnick. Nov. 2015. 752p. illus. Little, Brown, $32 (9780316042741). 781.66. The story of how Memphis record producer Sam […]

My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Hengry Jaglom and Orson Welles. Ed. by Peter Biskind. July 2013. 320p. Holt/Metropolitan, $28 (9780805097252). 791.4302. When his first film, Citizen Kane, was released, […]

The Three Stooges: Hollywood Filming Locations. By Jim Pauley. 2012. 336p. illus. IPG/Santa Monica, $39.95 (9781595800701). 791.430. The soundstages of Columbia Pictures, at Sunset and Gower, and the surrounding environs [...]

The Petting Zoo. By Jim Carroll. Nov. 2010. 328p. Penguin, $25.95 (9780670022182). Carroll's first novel is, unfortunately, his last. A poet, memoirist, and punk rocker, Carroll died in 2009. His [...]

Take One Candle, Light a Room. By Susan Straight. Oct. 2010. 336p. Pantheon, $25.95 (9780307379146). For some, despite passage of time or change of location, the past is very much [...]

Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations: The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization, 2013. By Greil Marcus. Oct. 2015.168p. illus. Harvard, $19.95 (9780674187085). 782.421. Marcus [...]

Los Lobos: Dream in Blue. By Chris Morris. Sept. 2015. 184p. illus. Univ. of Texas, $22.95 (9780292748231); e book (9781477308523). 782.421. A cultural institution for more than 40 years, Los [...]

Going into the City: Portrait of a Critic as a Young Man. By Robert Christgau. Mar. 2015. 384p. Morrow/Dey St., $27.99 (9780062238795); e-book (9780062238818). 781.6. When one thinks of the [...]

John Prine: In Spite of Himself. By Eddie Huffman. Mar. 2015.224p. Univ. of Texas, $24.95 (9780292748224); e-book, $24.95 (9780292772441). 782.421. Prine's honest, empathic, plainspoken, and humorous lyrics coupled with tuneful [...]

Voices in the Night. By Steven Millhauser. Apr. 2015. 304p. Knopf, $25.95 (9780385351591). In his latest collection of intriguing, innovative, and evocative stories, Pulitzer Prize winner Miilhauser (Martin Dressier, 1996) [...]

The Elvis Encyclopedia. By Adam Victor. 2008. 598p. illus. Overlook, $65 (9781585675982). 782.42. A glut of literature exists about Elvis Presley, so much so that it is practically impossible to [...]

Reeling through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love, and Die at the Movies. By Tara Ison. Jan. 2015. 352p. Soft Skull, paper, $15.95 (9781619024816). 791.43. Ison, self-proclaimed "child of […]