Skip to main content

Shopping Cart

You're getting the VIP treatment!

Item(s) unavailable for purchase
Please review your cart. You can remove the unavailable item(s) now or we'll automatically remove it at Checkout.
itemsitem
itemsitem

Recommended For You

Loading...

History & Criticism eBooks

If you like History & Criticism eBooks, then you'll love these top picks.
Showing 1 - 24 of 6921 Results
Skip side bar filters
  • How Music Works

    by David Byrne ...
    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 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—now updated with a new chapter on digital curation.“How Music Works is a buoyant hybrid of social history, anthropological survey, autobiography, personal philosophy, and business manual” ... Read more

    $13.99 USD $4.99 USD

  • Time's Echo

    The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance

    A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES, NPR • WINNER OF THREE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARDS • Finalist for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction • A stirring account of how music bears witness to history and carries forward the memory of the wartime past • SUNDAY TIMES OF LONDON HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEARIn 1785, when the great German poet Friedrich Schiller penned his immortal “Ode to Joy,” ... Read more

    $4.99 USD

  • Pearl Jam Twenty

    by Pearl Jam ...
    Published in celebration of Pearl Jam’s twentieth anniversary and in conjunction with Cameron Crowe’s definitive film, Pearl Jam Twenty is the unprecedented, and lavishly illustrated portrait of one of the world’s most influential and successful bands.Published in celebration of Pearl Jam’s twentieth anniversary and in conjunction with Cameron Crowe’s definitive documentary film and soundtrack of ... Read more

    $2.99 USD

  • Meet Me in the Bathroom

    Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011

    by Lizzy Goodman ...
    Named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR and GQJoining the ranks of the classics Please Kill Me, Our Band Could Be Your Life, and Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, an intriguing oral history of the post-9/11 decline of the old-guard music industry and rebirth of the New York rock scene, led by a group of iconoclastic rock bands.In the second half of the twentieth-century New York was the source of new sounds, ... Read more

    $16.99 USD $2.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Mood Machine

    The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist

    by Liz Pelly ...
    NATIONAL BESTSELLERAn unsparing investigation into Spotify’s origins and influence on music, weaving unprecedented reporting with incisive cultural criticism, illuminating how streaming is reshaping music for listeners and artists alike.Drawing on over one hundred interviews with industry insiders, former Spotify employees, and musicians, Mood Machine takes us to the inner workings of today’s ... Read more

    $14.99 USD

  • Dreaming the Beatles

    The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World

    by Rob Sheffield ...
    An NPR Best Book of the Year • Winner of the Virgil Thomson Award for Outstanding Music Criticism“This is the best book about the Beatles ever written” —MashableRob Sheffield, the Rolling Stone columnist and bestselling author of Love Is a Mix Tape offers an entertaining, unconventional look at the most popular band in history, the Beatles, exploring what they mean... ... Read more

    $11.99 USD $1.99 USD

  • Pink Floyd

    Album by Album

    by Martin Popoff ...
    Series series Album by Album
    An in-depth discography filled with facts, photos, and conversations with musicians, rock journalists, and fans of the band.This stunning look back at Pink Floyd’s discography comprises a series of in-depth, frank, and entertaining conversations about all of the band’s studio albums, including their soundtrack efforts and the instrumental/ambient The Endless River. Inside, prolific rock journalist ... Read more

    $21.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • The Rest Is Noise

    Listening to the Twentieth Century

    by Alex Ross ...
    **Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for CriticismA New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the YearTime magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007A Washington Post Book World** Best Book of 2007In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its m... ... Read more

    $13.99 USD

  • And the Roots of Rhythm Remain

    by Joe Boyd ...
    Series Book 6 - ZE Series
    From the legendary producer of Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, REM, and Taj Mahal and author of White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s comes a riveting, world-spanning tour of the artists, histories, controversies, and collaborations that shaped global music.When Paul Simon first heard the Zulu accordion flourish that would open his multi-platinum album Graceland, he told Joe Boyd that it seemed to ... Read more

    $17.99 USD

  • Let's Do It

    The Birth of Pop Music: A History

    by Bob Stanley ...
    The must-read music book of the year—and the first such history bringing together all musical genres to tell the definitive narrative of the birth of Pop—from 1900 to the mid-1950s.Pop music didn't begin with the Beatles in 1963, or with Elvis in 1956, or even with the first seven-inch singles in 1949. There was a pre-history that went back to the first recorded music, right back to the turn of ... Read more

    $22.99 USD

  • Folk City

    New York and the American Folk Music Revival

    From Washington Square Park and the Gaslight Café to WNYC Radio and Folkways Records, New York City's cultural, artistic, and commercial assets helped to shape a distinctively urban breeding ground for the folk music revival of the 1950s and 60s. Folk City explores New York's central role in fueling the nationwide craze for folk music in postwar America. It involves the efforts of record company ... Read more

    $34.99 USD

  • The Complete David Bowie (Revised and Updated 2016 Edition)

    by Nicholas Pegg ...
    The biggest edition yet – expanded and updated with 35,000 words of new materialCritically acclaimed in its previous editions, The Complete David Bowie is widely recognized as the foremost source of analysis and information on every facet of Bowie’s career. The A-Z of songs and the day-by-day dateline are the most complete ever published. From the 11-year-old’s skiffle performance at the 18th ... Read more

    $13.99 USD

  • Rock'n America

    A Social and Cultural History

    What is rock? This book offers a new and systematic approach to understanding rock by applying sociological concepts in a historical context. Deena Weinstein, a rock critic, journalist, and academic, starts by outlining an original approach to understanding rock, explaining how the form has developed through a complex and ever-changing set of relations between artists, fans, and mediators. She ... Read more

    $43.99 USD

  • Cursed Questions

    On Music and Its Social Practices

    Richard Taruskin’s sweeping collection of essays distills a half century of professional experience, demonstrating an unparalleled insider awareness of relevant debates in all areas of music studies, including historiography and criticism, representation and aesthetics, musical and professional politics, and the sociology of taste. Cursed Questions, invoking a famous catchphrase from Russian ... Read more

    $32.99 USD

  • Ornette Coleman

    The Territory and the Adventure

    by Maria Golia ...
    With striking photographs and personal insight, a compelling biography of the great American saxophonist and free jazz innovator Ornette Coleman.Ornette Coleman’s career encompassed the glory years of jazz and the American avant-garde. Born in segregated Fort Worth, Texas, during the Great Depression, the African-American composer and musician was zeitgeist incarnate. Steeped in the Texas blues ... Read more

    $19.99 USD

  • A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers

    Will Friedwald’s illuminating, opinionated essays—provocative, funny, and personal—on the lives and careers of more than three hundred singers anatomize the work of the most important jazz and popular performers of the twentieth century. From giants like Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, and Judy Garland to lesser-known artists like Jeri Southern and Joe Mooney, they have created a ... Read more

    $24.99 USD $17.99 USD

  • Lamestains

    Grunge, Sub Pop and the Music of the Loser

    A surprising history of Seattle’s Sub Pop Records, pioneer of grunge . . . and champion of losers.This book is a critical history of Sub Pop Records, the Seattle independent rock label that launched the careers of countless influential grunge bands in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It focuses in particular on the languages and personas of the “loser,” a term that encompassed the label’s founders ... Read more

    $20.99 USD

  • The Strat in the Attic 2

    More Thrilling Stories of Guitar Archaeology

    Don’t fret! The music historian and guitar sleuth brings you more astounding stories of rare guitar finds and the legends who owned them.Do you dream of finding a 1954 Stratocaster or 1952 Gibson Les Paul online, at a garage sale, or in the local penny saver? How about virtually rubbing elbows with one of your favorite rock legends? Following up his first-of-its-kind The Strat in the Attic, ... Read more

    $18.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Too Much Too Young, the 2 Tone Records Story: Rude Boys, Racism, and the Soundtrack of a Generation

    by Daniel Rachel ...
    The definitive and remarkable story of 2 Tone Records, featuring an introduction by Pauline Black—A Times/Sunday Times Book of the Year—An Uncut Book of the Year—Long-Listed for the Penderyn Music Book Prize—A Louder Than War Book of the Year—A Blitzed Magazine Book of the YearIn 1979, 2 Tone Records exploded into the consciousness of music lovers in Britain, the US, a... ... Read more

    $21.99 USD

  • They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

    *Best Books of 2018 —Rolling Stone"A Best Book of 2017" —NPR, Buzzfeed, Paste Magazine, Esquire, Chicago Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, CBC, Stereogum, National Post, Entropy, Heavy, Book Riot, Chicago Review of Books, The Los Angeles Review, Michigan Daily*American Booksellers Association (ABA) 'December 2017 Indie Next List Great Reads'<br ... ... Read more

    $9.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Young Marble Giants' Colossal Youth

    Series series 33 1/3
    Welsh post-punk band Young Marble Giants released one LP in 1980 and then, like their vanishing portraits on the album's cover, disappeared. Even though Colossal Youth received positive reviews and sold surprisingly well, Young Marble Giants quickly slid into the margins of rock 'n' roll history-relegated to cult status among post-punk and indie rock fans. Their lasting appeal owes itself to the ... Read more

    $12.99 USD

  • Jelly Roll Blues

    Censored Songs and Hidden Histories

    by Elijah Wald ...
    The New York Times bestselling author of Dylan Goes Electric! follows Jelly Roll Morton on a journey through the hidden worlds and forbidden songs of early blues and jazz.In Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs and Hidden Histories, Elijah Wald takes readers on a journey into the hidden and censored world of early blues and jazz, guided by the legendary New Orleans pianist Jelly Roll Morton. Morton ... Read more

    $15.99 USD

  • Duran Duran's Rio

    by Annie Zaleski ...
    Series series 33 1/3
    In the '80s, the Birmingham, England, band Duran Duran became closely associated with new wave, an idiosyncratic genre that dominated the decade's music and culture. No album represented this rip-it-up-and-start-again movement better than the act's breakthrough 1982 LP, Rio. A cohesive album with a retro-futuristic sound-influences include danceable disco, tangy funk, swaggering glam, and Roxy ... Read more

    $12.99 USD

  • A Mind Full of Music

    Essays on Imagination and Popular Song

    by Chris Forhan ...
    A Mind Full of Music contemplates and celebrates the mysterious, powerful, dynamic relationship between ourselves and the songs we love: the way in which songs work upon our minds and in which our minds, because of the inevitable creative force of our imaginations and memories, work upon them. The book does not propose or develop a unified argument, nor does it tell, chronologically, the story of ... Read more

    $9.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus