Greil Marcus

"This book traces the history of rock 'n' roll through six key, fundamental artists: Robert Johnson, Harmonica Frank, Randy Newman, the Band, Sly Stone, and Elvis Presley"--

Greil Marcus has been one of the most distinctive voices in American music criticism for over forty years. His books, including Mystery Train and The Shape of Things to Come, traverse soundscapes of folk and blues, rock and punk, attuning readers to the surprising, often hidden affinities between the music and broader streams of American politics and culture. Drawn from Marcus's 2013 Massey Lectures at Harvard, his new work delves into three episodes...

America is a nation making itself up as it goes along--a story of discovery and invention unfolding in speeches and images, letters and poetry, unprecedented feats of scholarship and imagination. In these myriad, multiform, endlessly changing expressions of the American experience, the authors and editors of this volume find a new American history. In more than two hundred original essays, this book brings together the nation's many voices. From the...

"An extraordinary archive of the most iconic sites on the American musical landscape. Prompted by the closing of New York's famed CBGB, Rhona Bitner embarked on a thirteen-year journey to photograph 403 venues across twenty-six states and eighty-nine cities--the studios, concert halls, arenas, high schools, bars, ballrooms, prisons, and fields where the most memorable songs were inspired, recorded, performed, and listened to"--Provided by publisher....