The Washington Post hails Greil Marcus as our greatest cultural critic. Writing in the London Review of Books, D. D. Guttenplan calls him probably the most astute critic of American popular culture since Edmund Wilson. For nearly thirty years, he has written a remarkable column that has migrated from the Village Voice to Artforum, Salon, City Pages, Interview, and The Believer and currently appears in the Barnes & Noble Review. It has been a laboratory where Marcus has fearlessly explored and wittily dissected an enormous variety of cultural artifacts, from songs to books to movies to advertisements, teasing out from the welter of everyday objects what amounts to a de facto theory of cultural transmission. Published to complement the paperback edition of The History of Rock & Roll in Ten Songs, Real Life Rock reveals the critic in full: direct, erudite, funny, fierce, vivid, astute, uninhibited, and possessing an unerring instinct for art and fraud. The result is an indispensable volume packed with startling arguments and casual brilliance.

For nearly thirty years, Greil Marcus has written a remarkable column called “Real Life Rock Top Ten.” It has been a laboratory where he has fearlessly explored and wittily dissected an enormous variety of cultural artifacts, from songs to books to movies to advertisements. Taken together, his musings, reflections, and sallies amount to a subtle and implicit theory of how cultural objects fall through time and circumstance and often deliver unintended consequences, both in the present and in the future. Real Life Rock reveals the critic in full: direct, erudite, funny, fierce, vivid, uninhibited, and possessing an unerring instinct for art and fraud. The result is an indispensable volume packed with startling arguments and casual brilliance.

Praised by Entertainment Weekly as “the man who put the fizz into physics,” Dr. Len Fisher turns his attention to the science of cooperation in his lively and thought-provoking book. Fisher shows how the modern science of game theory has helped biologists to understand the evolution of cooperation in nature, and investigates how we might apply those lessons to our own society. In a series of experiments that take him from the polite confines of an English dinner party to crowded supermarkets, congested Indian roads, and the wilds of outback Australia, not to mention baseball strategies and the intricacies of quantum mechanics, Fisher sheds light on the problem of global cooperation. The outcomes are sometimes hilarious, sometimes alarming, but always revealing. A witty romp through a serious science, Rock, Paper, Scissors will both teach and delight anyone interested in what it what it takes to get people to work together.

The legendary critic and author of Mystery Train “ingeniously retells the tale of rock and roll” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Unlike previous versions of rock ’n’ roll history, this book omits almost every iconic performer and ignores the storied events and turning points everyone knows. Instead, in a daring stroke, Greil Marcus selects ten songs and dramatizes how each embodies rock ’n’ roll as a thing in itself, in the story it tells, inhabits, and acts out—a new language, something new under the sun. “Transmission” by Joy Division. “All I Could Do Was Cry” by Etta James and then Beyoncé. “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” first by the Teddy Bears and almost half a century later by Amy Winehouse. In Marcus’s hands these and other songs tell the story of the music, which is, at bottom, the story of the desire for freedom in all its unruly and liberating glory. Slipping the constraints of chronology, Marcus braids together past and present, holding up to the light the ways that these striking songs fall through time and circumstance, gaining momentum and meaning, astonishing us by upending our presumptions and prejudices. This book, by a founder of contemporary rock criticism—and its most gifted and incisive practitioner—is destined to become an enduring classic. “One of the epic figures in rock writing.”—The New York Times Book Review “Marcus is our greatest cultural critic, not only because of what he says but also, as with rock-and-roll itself, how he says it.”—The Washington Post Winner of the Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award in Music Criticism, given by the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers

How to Rock Your Life is the book the author wished existed when she was suffering from a chronic case of post-show blues. Beating them with a rainstick, a hacky-sack, and a big boatload of intentional life changes, she knew she had to share what she learned. If youre a live music fanatic, youll go anywhere the music is playing for just one more taste of the good stuff. Is it possible to bring that live music magic home with you? It is, and Taraleigh Weathers will show you the way. Filled with entertaining, laugh-out-loud, inspiring, and vulnerable stories, been-there-done that advice, playful exercises, and many references to Phish and the Grateful Dead, How to Rock Your Life will guide you to maintain the live music magic in your everyday experience. Just like you do when your favorite band is performing, Taraleigh will show you how you can channel the wildest expression of your authentic self on a daily basis, feel those unique music festival feels at home, and find the magic in even the most mundane and uncomfortable of situations. Shell prove to you that it is indeed possible to surrender to the flow of the present moment before, during, and after the show. If you dont read this book, therell be curse placed upon you. From now until eternity, the person next to you at the show will never stop talking from the time the band plays the first note until the last. Just kidding. The truth is that if youre seated next to Loose Lips Lucy, after reading this book, youll have the tools to deal with that situation with ease and grace. Read the book.

A poignant fictional oral history of the beloved rock 'n' roll duo who shot to fame in the 1970s New York, and the dark, fraught secret that lies at the peak of their stardom

From a legendary music journalist with four decades of unprecedented access, an insider’s behind-the-scenes look at the major personalities of rock and roll. Lisa Robinson has interviewed the biggest names in music—including Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, John Lennon, Patti Smith, U2, Eminem, Lady Gaga, Jay Z, and Kanye West. She visited the teenage Michael Jackson many times at his Encino home. She spent hours talking to John Lennon at his Dakota apartment—and in recording studios just weeks before his murder. She introduced David Bowie to Lou Reed at a private dinner in a Manhattan restaurant, helped the Clash and Elvis Costello get their record deals, was with the Rolling Stones on their jet during a frightening storm, and was mid-flight with Led Zeppelin when their tour manager pulled out a gun. A pioneering female journalist in an exclusive boys’ club, Lisa Robinson is a preeminent authority on the personalities and influences that have shaped the music world; she has been recognized as rock journalism’s ultimate insider. A keenly observed and lovingly recounted look back on years spent with countless musicians backstage, after-hours, and on the road, There Goes Gravity documents a lifetime of riveting stories, told together here for the first time.