Music.

No Wave traces the history of this influential genre from its most famous names down to its many offshoots and sidetracks. No Wave charts all the happenings

“Are We Not New Wave? is destined to become the definitive study of new wave music.” —Mark Spicer, coeditor of Sounding Out Pop New wave emerged at the turn of the 1980s as a pop music movement cast in the image of punk rock’s sneering demeanor, yet rendered more accessible and sophisticated. Artists such as the Cars, Devo, the Talking Heads, and the Human League leapt into the Top 40 with a novel sound that broke with the staid rock clichés of the 1970s and pointed the way to a more modern pop style. In Are We Not New Wave? Theo Cateforis provides the first musical and cultural history of the new wave movement, charting its rise out of mid-1970s punk to its ubiquitous early 1980s MTV presence and downfall in the mid-1980s. The book also explores the meanings behind the music’s distinctive traits—its characteristic whiteness and nervousness; its playful irony, electronic melodies, and crossover experimentations. Cateforis traces new wave’s modern sensibilities back to the space-age consumer culture of the late 1950s/early 1960s. Three decades after its rise and fall, new wave’s influence looms large over the contemporary pop scene, recycled and celebrated not only in reunion tours, VH1 nostalgia specials, and “80s night” dance clubs but in the music of artists as diverse as Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, and the Killers.

Wave's most popular author presents his first poetry collection since Letters to Wendy's.

Set in the vibrant Industrial Age and filigreed with family drama and epic ambition, Crosley chronicles one of the great untold tales of the twentieth century. Crosley is a once-in-two-lifetimes book, chronicling the conquests of Powel Crosley, Jr., one of the greatest innovators of the twentieth century, and Lewis Crosley, his brother who engineered the successful culmination of all Powel's plans.

After his father dies, Kai experiences all kinds of emotions: sadness, anger, fear, guilt. Sometimes they crash and mix together. Other times, there are no emotions at all—just flatness. As Kai and his family adjust to life without Dad, the waves still roll in. But with the help of friends and one another, they learn to cope—and, eventually, heal. A lyrical story about grieving for anyone encountering loss.

The Ninth Wave, published in 1956, follows a political campaign complete with then cutting-edge innovations of opinion polling, computers and the use of campaign consultants. Though we now know -- even in a world of Facebook and Obama -- that data and numbers can't quite predict and control political outcomes in the way the book lays out, the world has turned out close enough to Burdick's picture of the future to make The Ninth Wave a prescient and still relevant story, and one that should be loved by people who are into the mechanics of politics. (Mark Pack)