Book reports: a music critic on his first love, which was reading

Collectibles

The informer: John Leonard's when the kissing had to stop

Advertisements for everybody else: Jonathan Lethem's the ecstasy of influence

Democratic vistas: Dave Hickey's air guitar

From blackface minstrelsy to track-and-hook

In search of Jim Crow: why postmodern minstrelsy studies matter

The old ethiopians at home: Ken Emerson's doo-dah!

Before the blues: David Wondrich's stomp and swerve

Rhythms of the universe: Ned Sublette's Cuba and its music

Black melting pot: David B. Coplan's in township tonight!

Bwana-acolyte in the favor bank: Banning Eyre's in griot time

In the crucible of the party: Charles Keil et al. Bright Balkan morning

Defining the folk: Benjamin Filene's romancing the folk

Folking around: David Hajdu's positively 4th street

Punk lives: Legs Mcneil and Gillian Mccain's please kill me

Biography of a corporation: Nelson George's where did our love go?

Hip-hop faces the world: Steven Hager's hip hop; David Toop's the rap attack; and Nelson George, Sally Banes, Susan Flinker, and Patty Romanowski's fresh

Making out like gangsters: Preston Lauterbach's the chitlin circuit, Dan Charnas's the big

Payback, ice-t's ice, and Tommy James's me, the mob, and music

Money isn't everything: Fred Goodman's the mansion on the hill

Mapping the earworm's genome: John Seabrook's the song machine

Critical practice

Beyond the symphonic quest: Susan Mcclary's feminine endings

All in the tune family: Peter van Der Merwe's origins of the popular style

Bel cantos: Henry Pleasants's the great American popular singers

The country and the city: Charlie Gillett's the sound of the city

Reflections of an aging rock critic: Jon Landau's it's too late to stop now

Pioneer days: Kevin Avery's everything is an afterthought and Nona Willis Aronowitz's (ed.)

Out of the vinyl deeps

Impolite discourse: Jim Derogatis's let it blurt: the life and times of Lester Bangs

America's greatest rock critic, Richard Meltzer's a whore jus like the rest, and Nick Tosches's. The Nick Tosches reader

Journalism and/or criticism and/or musicology and/or sociology (and/or writing): Simon Frith

Serious music: Robert Walser's running with the devil

Minutes of . . . : William York's who's who in rock music

The fanzine worldview, alphabetized: Ira A. Robbins's trouser press guide to new wave records

Awesome: Simon Reynolds's blissed out

Ingenuousness lost: James Miller's flowers in the dustbin

Rock criticism lives: Jessica Hopper's the first collection of criticism by a living female rock critic

Emo meets Trayvon Martin: Hanif Abdurraqib's they can't kill us until they kill us

Lives in music inside and out

Great book of fire: Nick Tosches's hellfire and Robert Palme's Jerry Lee Lewis rocks!

That bad man, tough old huddie ledbetter: Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell's the life and legend of leadbelly

The impenetrable heroism of Sam Cooke: Peter Guralnick's dream boogie

Bobby and dave: Bob Dylan's chronicles: volume one and Dave van Ronk's the mayor of Macdougal street

Tell all: Ed Sanders's fug you and Samuel R. Delany's the motion of light in water

King of the thrillseekers: Richard Hell's I dreamed i was a very clean tramp

Lives saved, lives lost: Carrie Brownstein's hunger makes me a modern girl and Patti Smith's m train

The cynic and the bloke: Rod Stewart's Rod: the autobiography and Donald Fagen's eminent hipsters

His own shaman: RJ Smith's the one

Spotlight on the queen: David Ritz's respect

The realest thing you've ever seen: Bruce Springsteen's born to run

Fictions

Writing for the people: George Orwell's 1984

A classic illustrated: R. Crumb's the book of genesis

The hippie grows older: Richard Brautigan's sombrero fallout

Comic GUrdjieffianism you can masturbate to: Marco Vassi's mind blower

Porn yesterday: Walter Kendrick's the secret museum

What pretentious white men are good for: Robert Coover's Gerald's party

Impoverished how, exactly? Roddy Doyle's the woman who walked into doors

Sustainable romance: Norman's Rush's mortals

Derring-do scraping by: Michael Chabon's telegraph avenue

Futures by the dozen: Bruce Sterling's holy fire

Ya poet of the massa woods: Sandra Newman's the country of ice cream star

A darker shade of noir: the indefatigable Walter Mosley

Bohemia meets hegemony

Épatant le bourgeoisie: Jerrold Seigel's bohemian Paris and T. J. Clark's the painting of modern life

The village people: Christine Stansell's American moderns

A slender hope for salvation: Charles Reich's the greening of America

The lumpenhippie guru: Ed Sanders's the family

Strait are the gates: Morris Dickstein's gates of Eden

The little counterculture that could: Carol Brightman's sweet chaos

The pop-boho connection, narrativized: Bernard F. Gendron's between Montmartre and the Mudd club

Cursed and sainted seekers of the sexual century: John Heidenry's what wild ecstasy

Bohemias lost and found: Ross Wetzsteon's republic of dreams, Richard Kostelanetz's Soho and Richard Lloyd's neo-bohemias

Autobiography of a pain in the neck: Meredith Maran's what it's like to live now

Culture meets capital

Twentieth century limited: Marshall Berman's all that is solid melts into air

Dialectical cricket: C. L. R. James's beyond a boundary

Radical pluralist: Andrew Ross's no respect

Inside the prosex wars: Nadine Strossen's defending pornography, Joanma Frueh's erotic

Faculties, and Laura Kipnis's bound and gagged

Growing up kept down: William Finnegan's cold new world

The secret fundamentalists: Jeff Sharlet's the family

Dark night of the quants: ten books about the financial crisis

They bet your life: four books about hedge funds

Living in a material world: Raymond Williams's long revolution

With a god on his side: Terry Eagleton's culture and the death of god, culture, and materialism

My friend Marshall: Marshall Berman's modernism in the streets.