Punk rock crooner Ian Svenonius (Nation of Ulysses, The Make-Up) pens a wry “how-to” guide to stardom, via tongue-in-cheek séances with deceased musicians and sincere lessons in swagger.

A work as ubiquitous as Beethoven's Fifth Symphony casts a nimbus that can prevent unclouded appreciation, but Matthew Guerrieri aims to strip away the clouds to reveal the beauty and significance of the work afresh.  In a book nearly as compelling as its musical subject, he delves into the symphony's legacy, its champions and detractors, and its significance to listeners of all walks of life.

Diamond Dave as a Zen master? Eddie Van Halen as musical monk? That's the case John Scanlan makes -- tongue only partly in cheek -- in this learned but lively take on Van Halen's rise to the pinnacle of rock stardom, improvising all the way. Philosophy you can dance to.

With dates announced for his upcoming Old Ideas concert tour, we celebrate the inimitable Leonard Cohen: bard, survivor, legend. His most recent album is a return to form for the balladeer, exploring signature themes of lust and longing, spirituality and struggle, all overlaid with a droll sense of humor as familiar as Cohen's prophetic voice.

Polka, Zydeco, and Italian treacle: if this is your idea of the only genres wherein the accordion flourishes, prepare to be enlightened by this entertaining history of that robust instrument's odyssey across the American musical landscape. Herself an accordionist, Marion Jacobson exhibits a music-lover's passion along with her in-depth scholarly knowledge of the instrument's rise, fall, and contemporary renaissance.

Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer: Colin Grant follows the founding fathers of reggae on a musical and historical journey deep into Jamaican culture, emerging with revealing insights into the spiritual and material paths these three visionaries charted. Getting the reclusive Bunny Wailer to talk on record about the seminal band formed by the trio is a coup that makes this an especially important read for music lovers.

This is an age of marvelous memoirs from rockers of a certain vintage:  Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, Patti Smith. Now comes a standout entry from a slightly younger musician. Bob Mould, born 1960, came to prominence during the mid-80s with his band Hüsker Dü. He lays bare the trials and tribulations behind the trio's success, and charts his subsequent solo career with insightful poetry and a gravitas that matches his famous sonic assaults.

David Browne documents the recording of four landmark albums in 1970--Let It Be by The Beatles, Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel, Sweet Baby James by James Taylor, and Déjà Vu by Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young. But what this colorful, captivating blend of history and music criticism really depicts is the end of the heady, idealistic energy of the 1960s and the beginning of a new era of rock & roll.

In this large-format, striking volume, Andrew Zuckerman combines words and pictures to evoke the power of music. With stunning photographic portraits and telling interviews with 50 musicians—including Fiona Apple, David Crosby, Philip Glass, Herbie Hancock, Ozzie Osbourne, Kid Rock, Iggy Pop, and Itzhak Perlman—Zuckerman examines the meanings and mysteries of creating, performing, and listening.

In his own lifetime, Gustav Mahler was a celebrated conductor whose massive symphonic works were tolerated with barely veiled embarrassment by the musical cognoscenti. Norman Lebrecht explains why they were wrong, and how Mahler's musical imagination has informed and changed our culture in the century since his death.

Pulitzer-winning historian (and Grammy-nominated liner note scribe) Sean Wilentz provides a revelatory mapping of the roots and branches—and even the knotholes—of Bob Dylan's American art. Personal, analytical, and compelling.

Love songs steeped in loveliness by two jazz luminaries, Keith Jarret and Charlie Haden. The relaxed affinty of pianist and bassist elicits emotional eloquence from such standards as "For All We Know," "Goodbye," and "Body and Soul." Read more...

The original 1967 collaboration between Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim, the Brazilian musician whose compositions were the best international ambassadors of bossanova, is quite simply one of the most beautiful realizations of popular music you'll ever come upon. In Rio slang "bossa" means "shrewdness," and Sinatra, recognizing no doubt that the new shrewdness, in its gentle, intimate undulations of sound and sense, gave fresh life to the old one, of which he was past master, tums in the most concentrated performances of his later career. This welcome reissue includes ten tracks from a less well-known session recorded two years later, with arrangements by Eumir Deodato; it's not quite as good as the first set, but then almost nothing is. Read more...

A composition without any music -- or any composed sound at all -- John Cage's 4'33" is so simple that it resonates with a symphonic array of aesthetic and philosophical issues, as Kyle Gann illustrates in this intriguing book. Read more...

The Chieftains enlist the help of Ry Cooder to explore the legacy of the San Patricios, a band of immigrant soldiers who, in 1846, deserted the American army during the Mexican-American War to fight for the other side. The result is part historical expedition, part cultural inquiry, and -- in its entirety -- a musically ebullient festival of creative imagination. Read more...