BB King is a blues musician with a much richer story than most – one that's captured here in very vivid detail by the author, as he mixes together a wealth of historical research with quotations from interviews and other materials too – all of which really makes the long journey of BB King come alive, as he shifts from roots in the south to the Memphis scene, then California, then superstardom that made him one of the biggest blues figures of the 20th Century! There's a great flow to the book – down to earth details that really make you feel like you're following King on his rise to fame – yet the big section at notes also indicates that the author wasn't just throwing stories out there without any support, and did plenty to weave the whole thing together with an eye for the facts. Softcover edition is 481 pages, with some black and white images. Book

A biography of one of the key creators in comics in the 20th Century – done in the format that he helped pioneer! The book is written in the first person – so more of an autobiography – although writer Tom Scioli provides all the words, and traces Kirby's evolution from a young child artist to a 40s giant in the new form of comic books, through his leaner postwar years, big 60s Marvel comics work, his 70s run at DC, and other moments too. Scioli really does a great job of opening up the intricacies of the comic business, and showing it's sometime seedier side – which illustrates some of the challenges that Kirby faced in his career, even while his work continued to be incredible. Hardcover edition is full color, 201 pages. Book

A really deep dig into the Japanese scene of the 90s – a unique discography that brings together key records in a variety of different styles – from tuneful to noisy, soulful to electronic! The book's a more contemporary variation of the sort of Japanese discographies we normally stock for jazz and soul music – and like those, it's got listings for titles with a full color reproduction of the cover, some details in English, and more text in Japanese. The feel is a bit like flipping through the record racks in Tokyo – where you can understand the context and the nature of the records, even if you can't understand the language. The book features sections on a wide range of styles – including Japanese house, Japanese hip hop, club jazz, Japanese dub, techno, Japanese lounge, J Rock, avant noise, alternative, and even sections on labels like Crue-L and Sokkyo. There's shorter features along the way – all in Japanese – and the book is softcover, full color, and almost 200 pages. Book

Remember the days when hip hop was so underground, it was hard to get pressed on vinyl? And most of the audience wasn't going to play the music on CD – leaving tapes to be the main format to circulate the music back in the underground! This cool volume really digs deep into that musical moment – a cassette-sized book that offers up a guide to hundreds of rare gangsta rap cassettes – each presented with their full front artwork on the smaller pages – with English listings of the dates, title, artist, label, and location – and a bit of added text in Japanese (which you should be able to read using Google translate.) The book features listings for over 300 cassette-only releases – then also has a smaller section on the selectors' favorites at the end, plus an index of artists – all presented in a really great, all-color softcover volume! Book

A really great book if you're digging for reggae records – one that features hundreds of listings of albums, both classic and hard to find – each with a small color image of the cover, dates and labels in English, and a small review in Japanese! You've probably seen this format for other Japanese disc guides on jazz, funk, or soul – and this volume brings that same approach to reggae records, tracing the music from the start of the 60s onwards – in chapters on The Ska Era, Rocksteady Era, Early Reggae, Roots Rock, Early Dancehall, Digital Dancehall, Neo Roots, Modern & Hybrid Era, and Reggae Revival. The book is softcover, over 300 pages, and has full color images throughout – and even if you can't read the Japanese text, you can likely use Google on your phone to make a translation. Book

A book that's a typographical masterpiece – a look at letters and signs from around the globe, past and present – organized in a wonderfully striking way! The book is part history, and much more about art and graphic design – as it's filled with page after page of really beautiful images – some that artworks, some that are listings of alphabetic fonts, and some that are just odd signs and photographs from the world at large! Obviously, letters are the main subject matter, but the book is way more than that – a beautifully expanded version of the original A2Z volume, with some great vintage advertising from the European scene – served up in a hefty, full-color, softcover volume, 314 pages in all. Book

A weird and wild take on the traditional Japanese disc guide – one that certainly offers up a range of heavy metal records, as promised in the title – but which also presents sidestreams in punk, jazz funk, and other styles too! As with similar books, the core text is in Japanese, but the huge volume presents page after page of record listings with titles, artists, dates, and labels all in English – plus full color images of the covers, with four albums listed on most page! The book is over 300 pages, divided into chapters with various genres – and while it definitely skews towards the modern metal in the title, it features plenty of older hard rock records too – hundreds of listings in all! There's also small reviews of each record in Japanese, which you can read using Google translate if you don't understand the language. Book

A great way to dive into the world of city pop music from Japan – that big flowering of new sounds and fresh ideas that really marked a key creative moment on the scene from the early 70s onward – a huge legacy that's only getting appreciation in recent years by English-speaking audiences! This beautiful book presents listings for almost 700 albums in all – with a listing of key classics, then important records by some of the best artists – starting from the early years, and running up through the CD generation as well – with full color reproductions of all the albums featured in the book! The listings offer key information on each record – sometimes English, sometimes Japanese – along with a short review of each record too, in Japanese. You can mostly read the text using an app on your phone, such as Google Translate – but even just for the pictures, the book is a wonderful guide to the music – one that will really help you start digging for obscure gems from Japan! Softcover, 238 pages, with full color images throughout. Book

Many years back, we always thought that David Byrne should have written a children's book – a volume to convey the best themes of some of the Talking Heads tunes to a younger, impressionable generation. And while that never actually happened, this beautiful edition of work released in conjunction with the American Utopia stage performance may be the next best thing – all sorts of lovely little illustrations from Maira Kalman, interspersed with text from Byrne from the performance – brought together in a volume that's as much a pleasure to flip through as the larger performance on stage. This isn't an attempt to capture the show in a book – but instead kind of a sidebar, almost a distillation of the ideas taken into a cool new format – served up in a hardcover volume, with full color illustrations throughout! Book