A history of world music that places musical developments in context to important historical events and examines the evolution of both Western and non-Western music from prehistoric times to the present.

A narrative of the history of popular music through the lens of twenty pivotal hits at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, which began in 1958, reveals a remarkably fluid and connected story of music.

Documents L.A.'s original underground music from the cowboy rockers of the 1950s, the revivalists of the 1980s, and the mexi-billy stars of today. Includes rockabilly, western swing, garage growls, cumbia strolls, and doo-wop.

"Now, in a seminal work, the classicist and linguist Susan Brind Morrow has recast the Pyramid Texts as a coherent work of art, arguing that they should be recognized as a formative event in the evolution of human thought. In The Dawning Moon of the Mind she explains how to read hieroglyphs, contextualizes their evocative imagery, and interprets the entire poem. The result is a magisterial religious and philosophical text revealing a profound consciousness...

Rare performances and historical footage tracing the development of American blues music.

"100 of the most moving and inspiring poems of the last 200 years from around the world, a collection that will comfort and enthrall anyone trapped by grief or loneliness, selected by the award-winning, best-selling, and beloved author of How to Read a Poem"--

"Richly illustrated with images from Art Spiegelman's work, Maus Now gathers together many of contemporary culture's leading critics, authors, and academics on the radical achievement and innovation of Maus more than forty years since its first publication. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Art Spiegelman is one of our most influential contemporary artists, and it is hard to overstate his effect on postwar American culture. Maus has shaped the fields...

"In his first book devoted exclusively to narrative fiction, America's most original and controversial literary critic and legendary Yale professor writes trenchantly about fifty-two masterworks spanning the Western tradition"--

"An illuminating deep dive into the making of Bruce Springsteen's most surprising album, Nebraska, revealing its pivotal role in Springsteen's career--from the New York Times bestselling author of Petty: The Biography. Without Nebraska, Bruce Springsteenmight not be who he is today. The natural follow-up to Springsteen's hugely successful The River should have been the hit-packed album Born in the U.S.A, but instead, in 1982, he came out with Nebraska,...

In this delightful collection, forty acclaimed writers explain what first made them interested in literature, what inspired them to read, and what makes them continue to do so. First published in 1992 in hardback only, original contributors include Margaret Atwood, J. G. Ballard, Melvyn Bragg, A. S. Byatt, Catherine Cookson, Carol Ann Duffy, Germaine Greer, Alan Hollinghurst, Doris Lessing, Candia McWilliam, Edna O'Brien, Ruth Rendell, Tom Stoppard,...