"From pop culture critic and music journalist Miles Marshall Lewis comes a book about the power and poetry of Kendrick Lamar! Kendrick Lamar is one of the most influential rappers, songwriters and record producers of his generation. Widely known for his incredible lyrics and powerful music, he is regarded as one of the greatest rappers of all time. Promise That You Will Sing About Me explores Kendrick Lamar's life, his roots, his music, his lyrics,...

An intimate exploration of the life, craft, and legacy of one of the most revered and influential writers, an artist who continues to inspire fans and creatives to cultivate practices of deep attention, rigorous interrogation and beautiful style. Joan Didion was a writer's writer; not only a groundbreaking journalist, essayist, novelist and screenwriter, but a keen observer who honed her sights on life's telling details. Her insights continue to influence...

Ed Ward covers the first half of the history of rock & roll in this sweeping and definitive narrative-from the 1920s, when the music of rambling medicine shows mingled with the songs of vaudeville and minstrel acts to create the very early sounds of country and rhythm and blues, to the rise of the first independent record labels post-World War II, and concluding in December 1963, just as an immense change in the airwaves took hold and the Beatles...

Music Is History combines Questlove's deep musical expertise with his curiosity about history, examining America over the past fifty years.

The author offers reflections on fifty powerful poems.

From Sia to Elton John, from Billie Holiday to David Bowie, LGBT musicians have changed the course of modern music. But before their music-and the messages behind it-gained understanding and a place in the mainstream, how did the queer musicians of yesteryear fight to build foundations for those who would follow them? David Bowie Made Me Gay is the first book to cover the breadth of history of recorded music by and for the LGBT community. Darryl W....

This comprehensive field guide to Marvel flora, fauna, and beasts great and small shows off claws, teeth, tails, and wings in sumptuous, never-seen-before detail.

One of the music world's pre-eminent critics takes a fresh and much-needed look at the day Dylan 'went electric' at the Newport Folk Festival, timed to coincide with the event's fiftieth anniversary. Elijah Wald explores the cultural, political and historical context of this seminal event that embodies the transformative decade that was the sixties.

"The entire history of popular music over the past fifty years refracted through the big genres that have defined and dominated it-including rock, country, punk, R&B, dance and hip-hop-woven together into a cosmic reckoning with music's evolution as a popular art form, as a huge cultural and economic force, and as an essential component to our identities, from Black Sabbath to Black Flag to Beyoncé, and beyond"--

"Organized around key American films from the 1970s, all of which he first saw as a young moviegoer at the time, this book is as intellectually rigorous and insightful as it is rollicking and entertaining. At once film criticism, film theory, a feat of reporting, and wonderful personal history, it is all written in the singular voice recognizable immediately as QT���s and with the rare perspective about cinema possible only from one of the greatest...