history and criticism

"A veteran music journalist explores how four legendary rock bands--KISS, Cheap Trick, Aerosmith, and Starz--laid the foundation for two diametrically opposed subgenres: hair metal in the '80s and grunge in the '90s"--Provided by publisher.

Rock and roll was birthed in basements and garages, radio stations and dance halls, in cities where unexpected gatherings of artists and audience changed and charged the way music is heard and celebrated, capturing lightning in a bottle. Musician and writer Lenny Kaye explores ten crossroads of time and place that define rock and roll, its unforgettable flashpoints, characters, and visionaries; how each generation came to be; how it was discovered by the world. Whether describing Elvis Presley's Memphis, the Beatles' Liverpool, Patti Smith's New York, or Kurt Cobain's Seattle, Lightning Striking reveals the communal energy that creates a scene, a guided tour inside style and performance, to see who's on stage, along with the movers and shakers, the hustlers and hangers-on--and why everybody is listening.

"The superhero comic books that Marvel Comics has published since 1961 are, [the author] notes, the longest continuous, self-contained work of fiction ever created: over half a million pages to date, and growing. The Marvel story is a gigantic mountain, smack in the middle of contemporary culture. Thousands of writers and artists have contributed to it. And not even the people telling the story have read the whole thing--nobody's supposed to. So, of course, that's what [the author] did: he read all 27,000 comics that make up the Marvel universe thus far, from Alpha Flight to Omega the Unknown. And then he made sense of it: seeing into the ever-expanding story, in its parts and as a coherent whole, and seeing through it, as a prism through which to view the landscape of American culture. In [his] hands, the mammoth Marvel narrative becomes a funhouse-mirror history of the past 60 years, from the atomic night-terrors of the Cold War to the technocracy and political division of the present day--a . . . tragicomic . . . epic about power and ethics, set in a world transformed by wonders. As a work of cultural exegesis, this is . . . significant, even a landmark; it's also . . . fun. Looking over close to sixty years of Marvel's comics, [the author] sees . . . patterns -- the rise and fall of particular cultural aspirations, and of the storytelling modes that conveyed them. He observes the Marvel story's progressive visions and its painful stereotypes, its patches of . . . hackwork and stretches of . . . creativity, and the way they all feed into a . . . cosmology that echoes our . . . hopes and fears"--Provided by publisher.

Looks at characters and other things from the DC multiverse.

Gives readers an inside look at "In the Heights", a breakthrough Broadway debut, soon to be a Hollywood blockbuster.

Examines the roots of rap and the history of hip-hop.

David Bryne draws from his experiences as a musician and his travels to examine the cultural and social significance of music.

"The sweeping story of cartoons, comic strips, and graphic novels and their century-long hold on the American imagination. Starting with the Civil War and cartoonist Thomas Nast, creator of the lasting images of Uncle Sam and Santa Claus, author Jeremy Dauber whizzes readers through comics' progress in the twentieth century and beyond: from the golden age of newspaper comic strips (Krazy Kat, Yellow Kid, Dick Tracy) to the midcentury superhero boom (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman); from the moral panic of the Eisenhower era to the underground comix movement; from the grim and gritty Dark Knights and Watchmen to the graphic novel's brilliant rise (Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel, Joe Sacco). Dauber's story shows not only how comics have changed, but how American politics and history have changed them. Throughout, he describes the origins of beloved comics, champions neglected masterpieces, and argues that we can understand how America sees itself through whose stories comics tell"--Provided by publisher.

Explores the history and sub-culture built up around Japanese anime, manga, and video games. Examines the term "mo?," which has been used to describe the sense of emotional attachment fans develop for their favorite characters.

Examines the secret music made by entertainer Bob Dylan and his band in a basement in Woodstock in 1967.