"In Paul Simon: An American Tune, Cornel Bonca considers Simon's vast trove of songs in the biographical and cultural context in which he wrote them: from the pop cultural revolution of the 1960s which Simon himself helped to create, the singer-songwriter movement of the 1970s, the turn toward world music in the 1980s that gave the world the monumental Graceland, to the intimate personal turn his music took in the millennial era. Analyzing Simon's...

"From one of the preeminent cultural critics of her generation, a radiant weave of memoir, criticism, and biography that tells the story of black women in music--from the Dixie Cups to Gladys Knight to Janet, Whitney, and Mariah-- as the foundational story of American pop"--

"From Irving Berlin to Cy Coleman, from 'Alexander's Ragtime Band' to 'Big Spender,' from Tin Pan Alley to the MGM soundstages, the Golden Age of the American song embodied all that was cool, sexy, and sophisticated in popular culture. For four glittering decades, geniuses like Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Harold Arlen enticed unforgettable melodies out of thin air. Gershwin, in his brief but incandescent career, straddled Tin Pan...

Analyzes every song and album of Jackson's solo career, from 1979's groundbreaking "Off the Wall" to his yet-to-be released material, placing the music in its social, historical, and cultural context.

"In this star-studded autobiography, Clive Davis shares a personal, candid look into his remarkable life and the last fifty years of popular music as only a true insider can. Davis' career has spanned more than forty years, and he has discovered, signed, or worked with a staggering array of artists: Whitney Houston, Janis Joplin, Simon and Garfunkel, Barry Manilow, Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Dionne Warwick, Carlos Santana, The Grateful Dead, Alicia Keys,...

"Everybody knows and loves the American songbook. But it's a bit less widely understood that in about 1950, this stream of great songs more or less dried up. What happened, and why? Acclaimed cultural historian Ben Yagoda answers those questions in a fascinating piece of detective work." --