"With this collection of more than fifty pieces on politics, photography, travel, history, and literature, Teju Cole solidifies his place as one of today's most powerful and original voices. On page after page, deploying prose dense with beauty and ideas, he finds fresh and potent ways to interpret art, people, and historical moments, taking in subjects from Virginia Woolf, Shakespeare, and W. G. Sebald to Instagram, Barack Obama, and Boko Haram."--Amazon.com....

"A comprehensive fifty-year history of the hip-hop genre, from renowned artist and author of MUSIC IS HISTORY, Questlove"--

"In Major Labels, Kelefa Sanneh, one of the essential voices of our time on music and culture, has made a deep study of popular music and how it unites and divides us. Sanneh distills a career's worth of knowledge about music and musicians into a brilliant and omnivorous reckoning with everything from his own punk youth to the racial dynamics of rap and country to the genius of Shania Twain. Sanneh shows how musical genres have been defined by the...

"From the creator of the popular website covermesongs.com comes the perfect book for music fans: the inside stories behind 20 iconic cover songs and the artists who turned them into classics. A great cover only makes a song stronger. Jimi Hendrix's version of Bob Dylan's 'All Along the Watchtower.' The Beatles rocking out with 'Twist and Shout.' Aretha Franklin demanding 'Respect.' Without covers, the world would have lost many unforgettable performances....

"Comedy is king. From multimillion-dollar TV specials to sold-out stand-up shows and TikTok stardom, comedy has never been more popular, democratized, or influential. Comedians have become organizing forces across culture--as trusted as politicians and as fawned-over as celebrities--yet comedy as an art form has gone under-considered throughout its history, even as it has ascended as a cultural force. In Comedy Book, Jesse David Fox--the country's...

"The History of Sketch Comedy will appeal to all kinds of comedy fans as well as fans of Keegan-Michael Key. With epic personal tangents and hilarious asides, their story takes you on an illuminating look at all facets of comedy from the stock characters of commedia del arte in the 16th century, to the rise of vaudeville and burlesque, the golden age of television comedy, the influence of the most well-known comedy schools, and ascension of comedy...

What is poetry? If music is sound organized in a particular way, poetry is a way of organizing language. It is language made special so that it will be remembered and valued. It does not always work--over the centuries countless thousands of poems have been forgotten. This little history is about some that have not. John Carey tells the stories behind the world's greatest poems, from the oldest surviving one written nearly four thousand years ago...

A nostalgic and unflinchingly funny celebration of the horror fiction boom of the 1970's and 1980's, complete with story summaries and artist and author profiles.

This social history looks at the many forces that shaped this most American of art forms and the many influences that gave rise to jazz's post-war styles. Rich with the voices of musicians, producers, promoters, and others on the scene during the decades following World War II, this book views jazz's evolution through the prism of technological advances, social transformations, changes in the law, economic trends, and much more. In a narrative enlivened...

In October 2016, Azar Nafisi sat down to write a letter to her father, who had been dead for twelve years. That month was the feverish conclusion to a singularly vitriolic presidential campaign; just weeks later, Donald Trump would be elected president of the United States. The years since have been besieged by crises--from the COVID-19 pandemic to a long-overdue reckoning on race in America to the rise of authoritarianism across the globe. Throughout...