Wanda Jackson's debut single, "You Can't Have My Love," reached the Top 10 while she was still a sixteen-year-old high school student. She hit the road after graduation, playing package shows with Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis...

From the critically acclaimed author of Temperament, a narrative account of the most defining moments in musical history—classical and jazz—all of which forever altered Western cultureThe invention of music notation by a skittish Italian ...

The long journey of an American song, from its enormous success in the early 1850s, written by a white man, considered the father of American music, about a Black man being sold downriver, performed for decades by white men in blackface, and the song...

American pop music is arguably this country’s greatest cultural contribution to the world, and its singular voice and virtuosity were created by a shining thread of Black women geniuses stretching back to the country’s founding. This is t...

A beautifully written, witty memoir that is also an immersive exploration of classical music—its power, its meanings, and what it can teach us about ourselves—from the MacArthur "Genius" Grant-winning pianist“Jeremy Denk has written...

A poet’s audio obsession, from collecting his earliest vinyl to his quest for the ideal vacuum tubes. A captivating book that “ingeniously mixes personal memoir with cultural history and offers us an indispensable guide for the search of ...

A quietly influential force in African American literature and art, Clarence Major makes his Penguin Classics debut with the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of Dirty Bird BluesSet in post-World War II Chicago and Omaha, the novel features Manfred Ba...

One of Oprah Daily's 20 Favorite Books of 2021 • Selected as one of Pitchfork's Best Music Books of the Year“One of the best books of its kind in decades.” —The Wall Street Journal An epic achievement and a huge delight, the en...

“Leila Cobo, vicepresidenta de Billboard, es posiblemente la principal periodista de la música Latina en Estados Unidos. Su libro repasa la historia de la música Latina, desde la salsa, nacida y criada en las calles de Nueva York,...

The quintessential depiction of 1980s New York and the downtown scene from the artist, actor, musician, and composer John Lurie“A picaresque roller coaster of a story, with staggering amounts of sex and drugs and the perpetual quest to retain s...

An acclaimed, career-spanning collection from a fiercely feminist and revered contemporary rock critic, reissued with new materialThroughout her career, spanning more than two decades, Jessica Hopper, a revered and pioneering music critic, has examin...

A fascinating poetic journey into the mind and heart of a musical genius, from the author of the celebrated Darwin: A Life in PoemsRuth Padel's new sequence of poems, in four movements, is a personal voyage through the life and legend of one of ...