You won't be able to put it down once you get started."- Chris Jericho, Talk is Jericho (Westwood One)"Fink is one of, if not the foremost authority on all things AC/DC… [Bon: The Last Highway] reads as a cross between an Agatha Christie–like novel and CSI–influenced approach to dissecting the physical evidence and outstanding questions related to the public story revolving around Bon’s death. I cannot recommend this book enough. Whether you love AC/DC, just like them or are just interested in rock ’n’ roll in general this is an amazing story."- Metal Geezers"Bon: The Last Highway by Jesse Fink is one of the most impressive biographies I've ever read. It is an absolute masterpiece that features more sources and research than most college textbooks. I was floored by the amount of effort and research that Jesse poured into this project."In the case of Bon Scott, both his tragic death and (potentially) his greatest lyrical work have been totally distorted for the sake of the legends that surround AC/DC. Jesse's book is one long re-examination of those legends, and he makes mince-meat out of most of the band's official stories... his work here is profoundly impressive."- Play That Rock’n’Roll "After being made aware of the previous poor attempts to tell Bon's story, I decided to read Bon: The Last Highway. Fink's book deserves 10 out of 10 for effort in gathering all the information possible.... Theory Two [about how Bon died] could not be any closer to the truth. I know, because I was there."- Joe Fury, Bon Scott's friend who went to the hospital in London when Bon was declared dead-on-arrivalBooks of the Year - Planet Rock (UK)Books of the Year - Herald Sun (Australia)Books of the Year - Loud Online (Australia)Books of the Year - All Music Books (USA)Books of the Year - InQuire, University of Kent (UK)Praise for Bon: The Last Highway by Jesse Fink:"A fascinating portrait of a troubled man with a serious alcohol addiction... the literary equivalent of a road movie." - Ronan McGreevy, Irish Times"One of 2017's most essential rock reads." - al.com (Alabama)"Over the years Bon Scott has become an untouchable rock god; but this book digs deeper. It's something that hasn't really been done before... it's a whole new look on the troubled frontman and a fine biography." - Jyrki "Spider" Hamalainen, Vive Le Rock (UK)"After being made aware of the previous poor attempts to tell Bon's story, I decided to read Bon: The Last Highway. Fink's book deserves 10 out of 10 for effort in gathering all the information possible.... Theory Two [about how Bon died] could not be any closer to the truth. I know, because I was there." - Joe Fury, Bon Scott's friend who went to the hospital in London to identify Bon's body"Hand-on-heart clarity and the haze of memory merge here to do justice to what is both a celebratory and cautionary tale... you will learn much on this road trip. You already know the soundtrack."- RTE (Republic of Ireland)"Jesse Fink is a very courageous writer... a fact-rich, exciting book that reads in places like a crime story. Investigative journalism at its best." - Metal Glory (Germany)"Just like the object of his desire (it is his second book on AC/DC), Fink is prone to perfectionism. He meticulously dedicates himself to the last three years in the life of Ronald Belford Scott ... Fink's book is a real gift for the fans of the tragically and much too early deceased singer." - Classic Rock (Germany)"Of the 20-plus books written about AC/DC, this one comes closest to the truth about how former singer Bon Scott died and his uncredited legacy as a songwriter... not just for fans, this is equal parts cautionary tale and meticulously researched document." - Courier Mail (Australia)"Fink's book meticulously explores the man and the many myths about Scott's life and death, and his hell of a ride in between." - Herald Sun (Australia)"A literary masterpiece." - Soundanalyse (Germany)"One of the most important publications on AC/DC... Fink has become something of an AC/DC detective and shines light on parts of the AC/DC story which have always been dimly lit. Music fans around the world have been waiting for this book - and it does not disappoint." - Denis Gray, Australian Rock Show"I read this book in seven hours, with a 20-minute break for dinner, and put it down almost breathless at the non-biased, staggering research. Bon: The Last Highway is probably one of the best books I've ever read - on anything! And I read a lot. This book goes up to 11! Extremely well done. A magnificent book." - Paul Chapman, guitarist, UFO"Crossing continents and tracking key figures down, Fink's work is impressive; his book is exhaustively investigative and engrossing." - Exclaim "Painstakingly researched." - Dangerous Minds"Phenomenal." - Sirius XM VOLUME "Debatable""Brilliant writing, many revelations. A must-read. Astonishingly good reporting." - Lori Majewski, SiriusXM VOLUME "Feedback""A great page-turner... a riveting read." - The Rockpit (Australia)"Jesse Fink is not the first writer to suggest there's something fishy about the official version of [Bon] Scott's death and its aftermath, but no one else has offered such a plausible or exhaustively researched alternative theory... vindicating old-school journalistic rigour, Fink compiled a vast testimony from multiple sources and invites the reader to decide where the truth lies, Rashomon-style. This is no easy task: key witnesses are either dead, like [Alistair] Kinnear, or their memories are clouded by the fog of war, like UFO's Paul Chapman and Pete Way. But as with his previous book, the absence of co-operation from the AC/DC inner circle has been to Fink's benefit... [he has] effectively undertaken the detective work that wasn't conducted at the time. It's a dense, tangled tale but Fink reveals the humanity behind the myth: Bon was a flawed, conflicted character, trapped in a persona, who ultimately chose the path he took and got unlucky." - Keith Cameron, MOJO"The most extensively researched book on AC/DC ever... it's outstanding. If you thought you knew Bon Scott, think again. This is as close as anyone is ever gonna get to the complete truth behind the legend, warts and all." - B.J. Lisko, Canton Repository, Ohio"The most in-depth investigation into what happened to Bon Scott on the night of his death you'll ever read." - Rich Davenport, Rich Davenport's Rock Show"This one-man investigation, born of respect for the truth and for Scott as a human being, blazes a new trail." - Joe Bonomo, author of AC/DC's Highway To Hell (33 1/3 Series)"Jesse Fink has done rock fans a great service. He dispels the many myths about how AC/DC's Bon Scott lived and died, and in doing so, brings to life one of the most influential, memorable, and complex figures in rock history." - Greg Renoff, author of Van Halen Rising"Fink leaves no stone unturned in this deep biography of Bon Scott." - Publishers Weekly "Amazing... the most in-depth researched book on Scott's final years ever written. The story of Bon's last days on earth has never been properly told...until now. This book is good enough it has me waiting for the movie." - Classic Rock Revisited

    And yet we rarely ask ourselves how we got there or what our occupations mean to us. The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work is an exploration of the joys and perils of the modern workplace, beautifully evoking what other people wake up to do each day–and night–to make the frenzied contemporary world function. With a philosophical eye and his signature combination of wit and wisdom, Alain de Botton leads us on a journey around a deliberately eclectic range of occupations, from rocket science to biscuit manufacture, accountancy to art–in search of what make jobs either fulfilling or soul-destroying.Along the way he tries to answer some of the most urgent questions we can ask about work: Why do we do it? What makes it pleasurable? What is its meaning? And why do we daily exhaust not only ourselves but also the planet? Characteristically lucid, witty and inventive, Alain de Botton’s “song for occupations” is a celebration and exploration of an aspect of life which is all too often ignored and a book that shines a revealing light on the essential meaning of work in our lives.

    Mark Lewisohn uses his unprecedented archival access and hundreds of new interviews to construct the full story of the lives and work of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. Ten years in the making, Tune In takes the Beatles from before their childhoods through the final hour of 1962—when, with breakthrough success just days away, they stand on the cusp of a whole new kind of fame and celebrity. They’ve one hit record ("Love Me Do") behind them and the next ("Please Please Me") primed for release, their first album session is booked, and America is clear on the horizon.  This is the lesser-known Beatles story—the pre-Fab years of Liverpool and Hamburg—and in many respects the most absorbing and incredible period of them all. Here is the complete and true account of their family lives, childhoods, teenage years and their infatuation with American music, here is the riveting narrative of their unforgettable days and nights in the Cavern Club, their laughs, larks and adventures when they could move about freely, before fame closed in.  For those who’ve never read a Beatles book before, this is the place to discover the young men behind the icons. For those who think they know John, Paul, George, and Ringo, it’s time to press the Reset button and tune into the real story, the lasting word.

    Yet a mere ten years earlier, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley had stood among the most influential rock and roll performers. Why did rock and roll become "white"? Just around Midnight reveals the interplay of popular music and racial thought that was responsible for this shift within the music industry and in the minds of fans.Rooted in rhythm-and-blues pioneered by black musicians, 1950s rock and roll was racially inclusive and attracted listeners and performers across the color line. In the 1960s, however, rock and roll gave way to rock: a new musical ideal regarded as more serious, more artistic--and the province of white musicians. Decoding the racial discourses that have distorted standard histories of rock music, Jack Hamilton underscores how ideas of "authenticity" have blinded us to rock's inextricably interracial artistic enterprise.According to the standard storyline, the authentic white musician was guided by an individual creative vision, whereas black musicians were deemed authentic only when they stayed true to black tradition. Serious rock became white because only white musicians could be original without being accused of betraying their race. Juxtaposing Sam Cooke and Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, and many others, Hamilton challenges the racial categories that oversimplified the sixties revolution and provides a deeper appreciation of the twists and turns that kept the music alive.

    His surprising journey illuminates not only our understanding of this immensely troubled, misunderstood, and complicated soul genius but the ways in which our cultural heritage has been shaped by Brown’s legacy.  Kill ’Em and Leave is more than a book about James Brown. Brown’s rough-and-tumble life, through McBride’s lens, is an unsettling metaphor for American life: the tension between North and South, black and white, rich and poor. McBride’s travels take him to forgotten corners of Brown’s never-before-revealed history: the country town where Brown’s family and thousands of others were displaced by America’s largest nuclear power bomb-making facility; a South Carolina field where a long-forgotten cousin recounts, in the dead of night, a fuller history of Brown’s sharecropping childhood, which until now has been a mystery. McBride seeks out the American expatriate in England who co-created the James Brown sound, visits the trusted right-hand manager who worked with Brown for forty-one years, and interviews Brown’s most influential nonmusical creation, his “adopted son,” the Reverend Al Sharpton. He describes the stirring visit of Michael Jackson to the Augusta, Georgia, funeral home where the King of Pop sat up all night with the body of his musical godfather, spends hours talking with Brown’s first wife, and lays bare the Dickensian legal contest over James Brown’s estate, a fight that has consumed careers; prevented any money from reaching the poor schoolchildren in Georgia and South Carolina, as instructed in his will; cost Brown’s estate millions in legal fees; and left James Brown’s body to lie for more than eight years in a gilded coffin in his daughter’s yard in South Carolina.   James McBride is one of the most distinctive and electric literary voices in America today, and part of the pleasure of his narrative is being in his presence, coming to understand Brown through McBride’s own insights as a black musician with Southern roots. Kill ’Em and Leave is a song unearthing and celebrating James Brown’s great legacy: the cultural landscape of America today.Praise for Kill ’Em and Leave “The definitive look at one of the greatest, most important entertainers, The Godfather, Da Number One Soul Brother, Mr. Please, Please Himself—JAMES BROWN.”—Spike Lee “Please, please, please: Can anybody tell us who and what was James Brown? At last, the real deal: James McBride on James Brown is the matchup we’ve been waiting for, a musician who came up hard in Brooklyn with JB hooks lodged in his brain, a monster ear for the truth, and the chops to write it. This is no celeb bio but a compelling personal quest—so very timely, angry, hilarious, and as irresistible as any James Brown beat.”—Gerri Hirshey, author of Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music “An unconventional and fascinating portrait of Soul Brother No. 1 and the significance of his rise and fall in American culture.” —Kirkus Reviews

    Terms and phrases such as "the global village" and "the medium is the message" are now part of the lexicon, and McLuhan's theories continue to challenge our sensibilities and our assumptions about how and what we communicate.There has been a notable resurgence of interest in McLuhan's work in the last few years, fueled by the recent and continuing conjunctions between the cable companies and the regional phone companies, the appearance of magazines such as WiRed, and the development of new media models and information ecologies, many of which were spawned from MIT's Media Lab. In effect, media now begs to be redefined. In a new introduction to this edition of Understanding Media, Harper's editor Lewis Lapham reevaluates McLuhan's work in the light of the technological as well as the political and social changes that have occurred in the last part of this century.

    Modonna Harris and her teenage daughter Brianna in Chicago often have no food but spoiled milk on weekends. After two decades of brilliant research on American poverty, Kathryn Edin noticed something she hadn’t seen since the mid-1990s — households surviving on virtually no income. Edin teamed with Luke Shaefer, an expert on calculating incomes of the poor, to discover that the number of American families living on $2.00 per person, per day, has skyrocketed to 1.5 million American households, including about 3 million children. Where do these families live? How did they get so desperately poor? Edin has procured rich — and truthful — interviews. Through the book’s many compelling profiles, moving and startling answers emerge. The authors illuminate a troubling trend: a low-wage labor market that increasingly fails to deliver a living wage, and a growing but hidden landscape of survival strategies among America’s extreme poor. More than a powerful exposé, $2.00 a Day delivers new evidence and new ideas to our national debate on income inequality.

    This seemingly small phenomenon symbolizes a significant social change that Robert Putnam has identified in this brilliant volume, which The Economist hailed as "a prodigious achievement."Drawing on vast new data that reveal Americans' changing behavior, Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from one another and how social structures--whether they be PTA, church, or political parties--have disintegrated. Until the publication of this groundbreaking work, no one had so deftly diagnosed the harm that these broken bonds have wreaked on our physical and civic health, nor had anyone exalted their fundamental power in creating a society that is happy, healthy, and safe.Like defining works from the past, such as The Lonely Crowd and The Affluent Society, and like the works of C. Wright Mills and Betty Friedan, Putnam's Bowling Alone has identified a central crisis at the heart of our society and suggests what we can do.

    Originating as a less-aggressive sister movement to punk, New Wave encompassed a wide range of styles, from Brit pub-rock to electronica, synth-pop, and even ska. The Encyclopedia of New Wave comprehensively captures this eclectic music, all of which enthralled the newly emergent MTV generation. With its tendency toward romantic minimalism, dark dance beats, and gender-bending antics, New Wave changed the course of popular musical history, as well as fashion and art.

    How can such sublime work have been produced by a man who (when we can discern his personality at all) seems so ordinary, so opaque—and occasionally so intemperate? John Eliot Gardiner grew up passing one of the only two authentic portraits of Bach every morning and evening on the stairs of his parents’ house, where it hung for safety during World War II. He has been studying and performing Bach ever since, and is now regarded as one of the composer’s greatest living interpreters. The fruits of this lifetime’s immersion are distilled in this remarkable book, grounded in the most recent Bach scholarship but moving far beyond it, and explaining in wonderful detail the ideas on which Bach drew, how he worked, how his music is constructed, how it achieves its effects—and what it can tell us about Bach the man. Gardiner’s background as a historian has encouraged him to search for ways in which scholarship and performance can cooperate and fruitfully coalesce. This has entailed piecing together the few biographical shards, scrutinizing the music, and watching for those instances when Bach’s personality seems to penetrate the fabric of his notation. Gardiner’s aim is “to give the reader a sense of inhabiting the same experiences and sensations that Bach might have had in the act of music-making. This, I try to show, can help us arrive at a more human likeness discernible in the closely related processes of composing and performing his music.” It is very rare that such an accomplished performer of music should also be a considerable writer and thinker about it. John Eliot Gardiner takes us as deeply into Bach’s works and mind as perhaps words can. The result is a unique book about one of the greatest of all creative artists.

    If its titular concern - life - doesn't exactly allow for rigid focus, it's still a fiercely inspired collection of songs and one of the definitive soul records of the 1970s. Stevie Wonder was unable to control the springs of his creativity during that decade. Upon turning 21 in 1971, he freed himself from the Motown contract he'd been saddled with as a child performer, renegotiated the terms, and unleashed hundreds of songs to tape. Over the next five years, Wonder would amass countless recordings and release his five greatest albums - as prolific a golden period as there has ever been in contemporary music. But Songs in the Key of Life is different from the four albums that preceded it; it's an overstuffed, overjoyed, maddeningly ambitious encapsulation of all the progress Stevie Wonder had made in that short space of time.Zeth Lundy's book, in keeping with the album's themes, is structured as a life cycle. It's divided into the following sections: Birth; Innocence/Adolescence; Experience/Adulthood; Death; Rebirth. Within this framework, Zeth Lundy covers Stevie Wonder's excessive work habits and recording methodology, his reliance on synthesizers, the album's place in the gospel-inspired progression of 1970s R'n'B, and many other subjects.

    Rooted in American techno/house and ’90s rave culture, electronic dance music has evolved into the biggest moneymaker on the concert circuit. Music journalist Michaelangelo Matos has been covering this beat since its genesis, and in The Underground Is Massive, charts for the first time the birth and rise of this last great outlaw musical subculture.Drawing on a vast array of resources, including hundreds of interviews and a library of rare artifacts, from rave fanzines to online mailing-list archives, Matos reveals how EDM blossomed in tandem with the nascent Internet—message boards and chat lines connected partiers from town to town. In turn, these ravers, many early technology adopters, helped spearhead the information revolution. As tech was the tool, Ecstasy—(Molly, as it’s know today) an empathic drug that heightens sensory pleasure—was the narcotic fueling this alternative movement.Full of unique insights, lively details, entertaining stories, dozens of photos, and unforgettable misfits and stars—from early break-in parties to Skrillex and Daft Punk—The Underground Is Massive captures this fascinating trend in American pop culture history, a grassroots movement that would help define the future of music and the modern tech world we live in.

    Either way, we can listen to nearly anything, at any time. The possibilities in this new age of listening overturn old assumptions about what it means to properly appreciate music—to be an “educated” listener. In Every Song Ever, the veteran New York Times music critic Ben Ratliff reimagines the very idea of music appreciation for our times. As familiar subdivisions like “rock” and “jazz” matter less and less and music’s accessible past becomes longer and broader, listeners can put aside the intentions of composers and musicians and engage music afresh, on their own terms. Ratliff isolates signal musical traits—such as repetition, speed, and virtuosity—and traces them across wildly diverse recordings to reveal unexpected connections. When we listen for slowness, for instance, we may detect surprising affinities between the drone metal of Sunn O))), the mixtape manipulations of DJ Screw, Sarah Vaughan singing “Lover Man,” and the final works of Shostakovich. And if we listen for closeness, we might notice how the tight harmonies of bluegrass vocals illuminate the virtuosic synchrony of John Coltrane’s quartet. Ratliff also goes in search of “the perfect moment”; considers what it means to hear emotion by sampling the complex sadness that powers the music of Nick Drake and Slayer; and examines the meaning of certain common behaviors, such as the impulse to document and possess the entire performance history of the Grateful Dead. Encompassing the sounds of five continents and several centuries, Ratliff’s book is an artful work of criticism and a lesson in open-mindedness. It is a definitive field guide to our radically altered musical habitat.

    On this four-decade-long journey from the studios where the first rap records were made to the boardrooms where the big deals were inked, The Big Payback tallies the list of who lost and who won. Read the secret histories of the early long-shot successes of Sugar Hill Records and Grandmaster Flash, Run DMC's crossover breakthrough on MTV, the marketing of gangsta rap, and the rise of artist/ entrepreneurs like Jay-Z and Sean "Diddy" Combs. 300 industry veterans-well-known giants like Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons, the founders of Def Jam, and key insiders like Gerald Levin, the embattled former Time Warner chief-gave their stories to renowned hip-hop journalist Dan Charnas, who provides a compelling, never-before seen, myth-debunking view into the victories, defeats, corporate clashes, and street battles along the 40-year road to hip-hop's dominance.

    Equally ubiquitous, though until now less the subject of serious inquiry, are temporary memorials: spontaneous offerings of flowers and candles that materialize at sites of tragic and traumatic death. In Memorial Mania, Erika Doss argues that these memorials underscore our obsession with issues of memory and history, and the urgent desire to express—and claim—those issues in visibly public contexts.   Doss shows how this desire to memorialize the past disposes itself to individual anniversaries and personal grievances, to stories of tragedy and trauma, and to the social and political agendas of diverse numbers of Americans. By offering a framework for understanding these sites, Doss engages the larger issues behind our culture of commemoration. Driven by heated struggles over identity and the politics of representation, Memorial Mania is a testament to the fevered pitch of public feelings in America today.