Books — Recently Added

We're not normally the biggest fans of hip hop photo books, but this one really does a great job of breaking the mold – by featuring excellent photographs of live performers and their audiences by David Scheinbaum – and interspersing the images with writings by Michael Eric Dyson, Brian ... Book

A heavyweight companion to the book England's Dreaming – Jon Savage's seminal history of the rise of punk in the UK in the 70s! This volume's far bigger than the main book – and features all the interview material that Savage collected for England's Dreaming – hundreds of pages ... Book

Louvin Brother Charlie tells the tale of his famous duo with brother Ira – a match that was almost a Cain and Abel of country music – given that Charlie and Ira Louvin sometimes sat at opposite moral poles on the spectrum! The story's as tragic as any of the best early songs by the ... Book

Great photographs from Mike Schreiber – a New York-based artist who worked heavily for The Source and Vibe back in the day – and managed to capture a whole heck of a lot of great shots in the process! Schreiber includes some nicely personal memories along with the photos – some ... Book

A wonderful guide to Brazilian music – one that offers up individual listings for 500 different albums – along with color images of their covers, label, release date, and artist/title information in English characters – plus a review of each record in Japanese! Even if you can't ... Book

A very cool book on the legendary Blue Note record label – home to some of the greatest jazz of the 20th Century, and still going strong well into the new millennium! The book is a bit like some of the Japanese discographies on the label – in that it offers up listings of different ... Book

A beautiful tribute to the vintage boombox and cassette culture – a lavish Japanese book that's filled with loads of full color images, plus additional articles and text in Japanese! The book is mostly visual – some pages don't have any words at all – and in addition to great ... Book

An amazing book – a true treasure for any fan of rare jazz albums! The book offers up way more than you'd guess from its title – because the array of material here is really fantastic – vintage jazz album covers of a very wide range, and not just the usual classics you might find ... Book

A loving tribute to tenor sax legend Gene Ammons – penned by friend and scenemate Al Carter-Bay – a Chicago jazz DJ who really offers a lot of insight to Ammons' life and music! Al's approach here is both personal and polemical – in ways that highlight aspects of Gene's music ... Book

More than 500 classic music posters, many unseen for years – in a lavish full-color book that presents the chronological evolution of the genre! The book follows vivid images from early rockabilly through 60s garage, soul, and and psych, through 70s arena rock and punk, to 80s and 90s indie, ... Book

The cover cops an image from a Joy Division album – and the book inside features a huge array of album art from the same generation! The book's not as fluffy as you might guess from the "new wave" title – as much of the records represented are in styles that include post-punk ... Book

Barney Hoskyns presents an incredibly lovely look at Capitol Records – a book that's every bit as amazing as the vintage image on the cover – presented in the best manner of the limited edition Taschen art books! The whole thing is huge – about 10 pounds in weight, packaged in a ... Book

A very cool book on the influence of Eastern spirituality on pop culture at the end of the 60s – one that not only looks at the way The Beatles discovered Indian music and religion, but also the way that moment exploded in so many other directions too! The presentation is great – full ... Book

Vintage photos of the New York Dolls – mostly from their seminal years of 1973 and 1974, when they were a key force in transforming the energy of the New York scene, and instrumental in paving the way for the punk years to come! The photos are great – mostly in black and white, with ... Book

A book that first appeared in the 70s, but which has a vibe that's much more timeless – almost as if it's a 19th Century work, in both its frankness and open, honest approach. Writer Simone Schwarz Bart mixes personal history with a richer narrative of life on the island of Guadeloupe – ... Book

A sweet little tour book commemorating DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist's Renegades Of Rhythm tour – and one that features a wealth of rare images from the early days of hip hop – of old gig flyers, records, drawings, acetates, and more! The most incredible fact about the tour itself, is that ... Book

We love 50s horror comics – and we especially love Tomb Of Terror – as it's one of the excellent publications from Harvey Comics in the pre-code years – filled with lurid artwork and some incredibly chilling stories! Like some of the other Harvey horror of the period, there's a ... Book

One of the amazing horror comics published by Harvey Comics in the pre-code years of the early 50s – and a publication that was noted for its wealth of creepy stories and equally chilling images! Harvey may have been the home to Casper the ghost, but on the horror tip they were something ... Book

Dig creepy comics? This book is full of them – a wealth of wonderful issues of the legendary Forbidden Worlds series from the 50s – a groundbreaking publication that set a whole new standard for horror and sci fi stories at the time – and a great companion to the legendary ... Book

A landmark science fiction publication from the earliest days of comic books – presented here in a heavy, hardbound format! The book is a great way to experience this otherwise-rare comic – and it's done in the heavy style of DC's Archive Editions, or the Marvel Masterworks volumes ... Book

The second volume in this series of completely essential books for collectors of Brazilian music! Like the first volume, this one is overstuffed with images of hard to find Brazilian music albums – listings for hundreds of rare records – all the kind of albums that we almost never are ... Book

Don't think "jazz for dancers", and instead think "funky jazz" – because that's what this sweet little book is all about – upbeat jazz tracks from the bop years onwards – served up in styles that run the gamut from soul jazz to electric funk, fusion, bossa, ... Book

William Claxton may be the best-remembered name in jazz photography on the west coast scene of the 50s and 60s – but photographer Bob Willoughby was right there alongside him, capturing all the beautiful images that are featured here in this lavish book! Like Claxton, Willoughby is a hell of ... Book

A very cool project from the Red Bull Music Academy – a surprisingly strong force in recent years for bringing together a range of different musical strands! The book features pairings of two different artists or musicians – each talking with the other about their music, the process of ... Book

A beautiful book that traces the intersection of art and commerce in the field of the record album cover – as museum-level creative talents from Salvador Dali, to Albert Oehlen, to Raymond Pettibon all got their time in the record racks – as you'll see in this huge book of full-color ... Book

We're ultra-proud to be Chicagoans – and one of the many things that makes is proud is The Chicago Defender – our city's famous African-American newspaper, easily one of the best and most important in a long legacy of progressive 20th Century publications! This very hefty book tells ... Book

The face of Harlem has been constantly changing for decades – but it may well be facing its greatest change in recent years – as waves of gentrification and development spread uptown in Manhattan, and may well forever alter the landscape of one of the most unique communities in America. ... Book

A deep look into the rugged Detroit rock underbelly from the mid 60s to today by Steve Miller – co-editor of Johnny Ramone's autobiography and editor of Touch And Go: The Complete Hardcore Punk Zine '79-'83 anthology – done oral history style, letting the principal figures tell the ... Book

A book that's maybe not what you'd guess from the title – or maybe only partly from the title – as the whole thing is a love letter to the font style of Cooper Black, used on the front – served up in a fantastic array of images from the late 60s onward! The rounded font has been ... Book

Say hello to my little book – the 1930 crime novel that inspired the Al Pacino film of the same name – a book that sets the story in the world of Chicago crime, where a young Tony Guarino rises from poverty to become the king of the mobs! Obviously, the setting's different than the ... Book