The true story of the fourth-grade teacher in Dayton, Ohio, who created one of the most influential bands of our times.Devoted fans have followed Guided by Voices for decades—and critics around the world have lauded the band's brain trust, Robert Pollard, as a once-in-a-generation artist. Pollard has been compared by the New York Times to Mozart, Rossini, and Paul McCartney (in the same sentence) and everyone from P. J. Harvey, Radiohead, R.E.M., the Strokes, and U...

Meet Vanessa Salomon, a privileged and misanthropic French-American translator hailing from a wealthy Parisian family. Her twin sister is a famous movie star, which Vanessa resents deeply and daily. The only man Vanessa ever loved recently killed himself by jumping off the roof of her building. It's a full life. Vanessa has just started working on an English translation of a titillating, experimental thriller by a dead author when she's offered a more prominent gig: translating the latest ...

Shirley Chisholm lived most of her life in secrecy and made a special effort to protect herself from the public, especially her personal and private life. She lived a very painful and lonely life surrounded by few friends and family. When Congresswoman Chisholm retired as a politician in 1983, she completely removed herself from political life. Hundreds of mass media people, film writers, book publishing companies, producers and authors have sought information about her personal and privat...

Meet Vanessa Salomon, a privileged and misanthropic French-American translator hailing from a wealthy Parisian family.Her twin sister is a famous movie star, which Vanessa resents deeply and daily. The only man Vanessa ever loved recently killed himself by jumping off the roof of her building. It’s a full life.Vanessa has just started working on an English translation of a titillating, experimental thriller by a dead author when she’s offered a more promine...

The New York Times Bestseller**One of Rolling Stone's 10 Best Music Books of 2015"Petty and Zanes have decided to tell the unvarnished truth, and the result is not only the definitive account of Petty's life, but one of the best rock biographies in recent memory."** — Rolling StoneAn exhilarating and intimate account of the life of music legend Tom Petty, by an accomplished writer and musician who t...

In September 1968, four English lads gathered together for the first time in a small, stuffy London rehearsal room in a basement filled with wall-to-wall amplifiers. It was their first big tryout as musicians, and each of them was nervous. Would they come together as a band? Or would they crash and burn, becoming nothing but a rock footnote? Then the room exploded, with wailing chords, howling vocals, and a locked-tight rhythm section—a sonic assault of heretofore unknown power. Here for t...

The long-awaited, full-force autobiography of American punk music hero, Bob Mould.Bob Mould stormed into America's punk rock scene in 1979, when clubs across the country were filling with kids dressed in black leather and torn denim, packing in to see bands like the Ramones, Black Flag, and the Dead Kennedys. Hardcore punk was a riot of jackhammer rhythms, blistering tempos, and bottomless aggression. And at its center, a new band out of Minnesota called Hvºsker Dv...

Newly updated to include his critically acclaimed post-millennial work, this look at Tom Waits - both the reality and the myriad myths - reveals the man behind the curtain. A tale of how a self-taught, drunken hipster in roach-killers and a dirty beret has influenced a generation of musicians with his sound, warmth, and willingness to take chances, this biography shows how he has moved between sideshow barker and evocative troubadour with ease, recording almost 20 albums that range from ca...

The cofounder of Guns N' Roses, Velvet Revolver, and Walking Papers shares what the hard-knock rock life has taught him about how to be a good dude (in spite of it all).One wouldn't usually turn to a veteran of Guns N' Roses for advice on how to live, but Duff McKagan is not a typical rock musician. As chronicled in the New York Times bestseller It's So Easy (and other lies), Duff got sober at thirty, went back to school, got smart about money, fel...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Grateful Dead’s official historian presents the definitive chronicle of one of the most long-lived and legendary bands in rock history.“A Long Strange Trip manages to capture the entirety of the complex organism that was the Grateful Dead. . . . The most comprehensive and reliable account out there.”—Entertainment Weekly“[Dennis McNally] conjures afresh the pure, unaccountable, jolting wei...

Published in autumn 2001 Have Not Been the Same became the first book to comprehensively document the rise of Canadian underground rock between the years 1985 and 1995. It was a tumultuous decade that saw the arrival of Blue Rodeo The Tragically Hip Sarah McLachlan Sloan Barenaked Ladies Daniel Lanois and many others who made an indelible mark not only on Canadian culture but on the global stage as well. Have Not Been the Same tells all of their stories in rich detail through extensive fir...

"A winning look at the stories behind 45 pop, punk, folk, soul and country classics" in the words of Mick Jagger, Stevie Wonder, Cyndi Lauper and more ( The Washington Post).Every great song has a fascinating backstory. And here, writer and music historian Marc Myers brings to life five decades of music through oral histories of forty-five era-defining hits woven from interviews with the artists who created them, including such legendary tunes as the Isley...