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History & Criticism eBooks

If you like History & Criticism eBooks, then you'll love these top picks.
Showing 49 - 72 of 5727 Results
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  • Connecticut Rock ‘n’ Roll

    A History

    by Tony Renzoni ...
    Long neglected in the annals of American music, the Nutmeg State's influence on the history of rock'n'roll deserves recognition.Connecticut's musical highlights include the beautiful harmonies of New Haven's Five Satins, Gene Pitney's rise to fame, Stamford's the Fifth Estate and notable rockers such as Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Rivers Cuomo of Weezer and Saturday Night Live Band's Christine ... Read more

    $12.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Self Empunishment

    by Brian Walsby ...
    Self Empunishment contains 34 conversations with self-reliant, self-employed, and otherwise self-motivated musicians, technicians, and artists.The interviews, conducted by Brian Walsby, are revealing discussions about what has led these artists to where they are now, what choices have guided their journey, why they do what they do, and how they have made it work for them. Also, plenty of talk ... Read more

    $9.95 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • The New Winds of Change

    The Evolution of the Contemporary American Wind Band/Ensemble and Its Music

    (Meredith Music Resource). A new and expanded version of the first two Winds of Change volumes containing much new information about wind band/ensemble literature, important conferences, concerts and events from the 19th century through 2015. ... Read more

    $32.99 USD

  • Led Zeppelin

    All the Albums, All the Songs

    by Martin Popoff ...
    This expanded edition of Led Zeppelin: All the Albums, All the Songs breaks down one of the world’s most prolific bands—track by track, album by album.Formed by the unlikely alliance of two ace London studio musicians and two bar-band bumpkins from the north, Led Zeppelin went on to create the template for the modern marauding rock ‘n’ roll band. Though Zeppelin is often described as “heavy,” any ... Read more

    $3.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Classical Music in a Changing Culture

    Essays from The American Record Guide

    by Donald Vroon ...
    Founded in 1935, The American Record Guide is America's oldest classical music review magazine. In 1987, when Donald Vroon assumed its editorship, he took on the Herculean task of writing editorials on a vast array of subjects, amassing a wealth of commentary and criticism on not only the foibles and failings, but glimmers of light in American culture. A staunch defender of the highbrow pleasures ... Read more

    $53.99 USD

  • Blondie's Parallel Lines

    Series series 33 1/3
    Blondie's Parallel Lines mixed punk, disco and radio-friendly FM rock with nostalgic influences from 1960s pop and girl group hits. This 1978 album kept one foot planted firmly in the past while remaining quite forward-looking, an impulse that can be heard in its electronic dance music hit “Heart of Glass.” Bubblegum music maven Mike Chapman produced Parallel Lines, which was the first massive hit ... Read more

    $12.99 USD

  • Keeping the Beat on the Street

    The New Orleans Brass Band Renaissance

    by Mick Burns ...
    Told in the words of the musicians themselves, Keeping the Beat on the Street celebrates the renewed passion and pageantry among black brass bands in New Orleans. Mick Burns introduces the people who play the music and shares their insights, showing why New Orleans is the place where jazz continues to grow. Brass bands waned during the civil rights era but revived around 1970 and then flourished ... Read more

    $18.99 USD

  • Biography of a Phantom

    A Robert Johnson Blues Odyssey

    **NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' PICK OF 2023The drama of In Cold Blood meets the stylings of a Coen brothers film in this long-lost manuscript from musicologist Robert “Mack” McCormick, whose research on blues icon Robert Johnson's mysterious life and death became as much of a myth as the musician himself"This is a human and humane book, an insightful exploration of the biographer’s craft. [...] ... Read more

    $16.99 USD

  • Industrial Strength Bluegrass

    Southwestern Ohio's Musical Legacy

    Series series Music in American Life
    In the twentieth century, Appalachian migrants seeking economic opportunities relocated to southwestern Ohio, bringing their music with them. Between 1947 and 1989, they created an internationally renowned capital for the thriving bluegrass music genre, centered on the industrial region of Cincinnati, Dayton, Hamilton, Middletown, and Springfield. Fred Bartenstein and Curtis W. Ellison edit a ... Read more

    $11.99 USD

  • Schoenberg and Hollywood Modernism

    Schoenberg is often viewed as an isolated composer who was ill-at-ease in exile. In this book Kenneth H. Marcus shows that in fact Schoenberg's connections to Hollywood ran deep, and most of the composer's exile compositions had some connection to the cultural and intellectual environment in which he found himself. He was friends with numerous successful film industry figures, including George ... Read more

    $29.99 USD

  • Piano

    The Making of a Steinway Concert Grand

    by James Barron ...
    An alluring exploration of the people and the legendary craftsmanship behind a single Steinway pianoLike no other instrument, a grand piano melds engineering feats with the magical sounds of great music: the thunder of a full-throated bass, the bright, delicate trill of the upper treble. Alone among the big piano companies, Steinway still crafts all of its pianos largely by hand, imbuing each one ... Read more

    $11.99 USD

  • Acoustemologies in Contact

    Sounding Subjects and Modes of Listening in Early Modernity

    In this fascinating collection of essays, an international group of scholars explores the sonic consequences of transcultural contact in the early modern period. They examine how cultural configurations of sound impacted communication, comprehension, and the categorisation of people. Addressing questions of identity, difference, sound, and subjectivity in global early modernity, these authors ... Read more

    $8.99 USD $7.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Carole King's Tapestry

    by Loren Glass ...
    Series series 33 1/3
    Carole King's Tapestry is both an anthemic embodiment of second-wave feminism and an apotheosis of the Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter sound and scene. And these two elements of the album's historic significance are closely related insofar as the professional autonomy of the singer-songwriter is an expression of the freedom and independence women of King's generation sought as the turbulent ... Read more

    $12.99 USD

  • Ten Masterpieces of Music

    by Harvey Sachs ...
    Some pieces of music survive. Most fall into oblivion. What gives the ten masterpieces selected for this book their exceptional vitality?In this penetrating volume, Harvey Sachs, acclaimed biographer and historian of classical music, takes readers into the hearts of ten extraordinary works of classical music in ten different genres, showing both the curious novice and the seasoned listener how to ... Read more

    $18.99 USD

  • Multivocality

    Singing on the Borders of Identity

    Multivocality frames vocality as a way to investigate the voice in music, as a concept encompassing all the implications with which voice is inscribed-the negotiation of sound and Self, individual and culture, medium and meaning, ontology and embodiment. Like identity, vocality is fluid and constructed continually; even the most iconic of singers do not simply exercise a static voice throughout a ... Read more

    $22.99 USD

  • Las Vegas Elvis Presley

    by Thomas Chi ...
    Publisher Thomas Chi returned to Memphis six months each year to interview for the Elvis book. He spent more time in Las Vegas, Nevada interviewing Elvis's girlfriends, lovers, and the dancers with stories about Elvis. Listen to the stories about Elvis. Travel the Blues Highway from New Orleans to Memphis.Thomas Chi writes about Jazz along the Blues Highway from New Orleans to Chicago. Listen to ... Read more

    $0.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • The Classical Music Book

    Big Ideas Simply Explained

    by DK ...
    Series series DK Big Ideas
    Learn about the world’s greatest classical compositions and musical traditions in The Classical Music Book.Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy to follow format. Learn about Classic Music in this overview guide to the subject, great for novices looking to find out more and experts wishing to refresh their knowledge alike! The ... Read more

    $9.99 USD

  • Love Is a Mix Tape

    Life, Loss, and What I Listened To

    by Rob Sheffield ...
    “The happiest, saddest, sweetest book about rock ‘n’ roll that I’ve ever experienced.”—Chuck KlostermanMix tapes: We all have our favorites. Stick one into a deck, press play, and you’re instantly transported to another time in your life. For Rob Sheffield, that time was one of miraculous love and unbearable grief. A time that spanned seven years, it started when he met the girl of his dreams, and ... Read more

    $12.99 USD $8.99 USD

  • They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

    *Best Books of 2018 —Rolling Stone"A Best Book of 2017" —NPR, Buzzfeed, Paste Magazine, Esquire, Chicago Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, CBC, Stereogum, National Post, Entropy, Heavy, Book Riot, Chicago Review of Books, The Los Angeles Review, Michigan Daily*American Booksellers Association (ABA) 'December 2017 Indie Next List Great Reads'<br ... ... Read more

    $9.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • The Rest Is Noise

    Listening to the Twentieth Century

    by Alex Ross ...
    **Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for CriticismA New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the YearTime magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007A Washington Post Book World** Best Book of 2007In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its m... ... Read more

    $13.99 USD

  • How Music Works

    by David Byrne ...
    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • David Byrne’s incisive and enthusiastic look at the musical art form, from its very inceptions to the influences that shape it, whether acoustical, economic, social, or technological—now updated with a new chapter on digital curation.“How Music Works is a buoyant hybrid of social history, anthropological survey, autobiography, personal philosophy, and business manual” ... Read more

    $13.99 USD

  • The Wrecking Crew

    The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Best-Kept Secret

    by Kent Hartman ...
    ***Winner of the Oregon Book Award for General Nonfiction and Los Angeles Times bestseller"It makes good music sound better."-Janet Maslin in The New York Times***"A fascinating look into the West Coast recording studio scene of the '60s and the inside story of the music you heard on the radio. If you always assumed the musicians you listened to were the same people you saw onstage, you are in for ... Read more

    $12.99 USD

  • Dreaming the Beatles

    The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World

    by Rob Sheffield ...
    An NPR Best Book of the Year • Winner of the Virgil Thomson Award for Outstanding Music Criticism“This is the best book about the Beatles ever written” —MashableRob Sheffield, the Rolling Stone columnist and bestselling author of Love Is a Mix Tape offers an entertaining, unconventional look at the most popular band in history, the Beatles, exploring what they mean... ... Read more

    $13.99 USD

  • Elvis: My Best Man

    Radio Days, Rock 'n' Roll Nights, and My Lifelong Friendship with Elvis Presley

    The touching story of thirty years of friendship between George Klein and the King that “offers an insider’s view of Presley the man as opposed to Presley the singer, actor, and icon” (Associated Press).“You capture the essence of Elvis not only in dialogue, but also in giving the reader a sense of his personality, humor, and his spirit of play.”—Priscilla PresleyWhen George Klein was an eighth ... Read more

    $14.99 USD