"Jessica Hopper's music criticism has earned her a reputation as a firebrand, a keen observer and fearless critic not just of music but the culture around it. With this volume spanning from her punk fanzine roots to her landmark piece on R. Kelly's past, The First Collection leaves no doubt why The New York Times has called Hopper's work "influential." Not merely a selection of two decades of Hopper's most engaging, thoughtful, and humorous writing,...

Music Is History combines Questlove's deep musical expertise with his curiosity about history, examining America over the past fifty years.

A novelist discusses his love of music and how it inspires his writing, including his infatuation with the Velvet Underground as well as more modern bands including Magnetic Fields, Wilco, and The Pogues.

A little girl falls down a rabbit hole and discovers a world of nonsensical and amusing characters.

Examines the history of hip-hop and rap, noting its beginning in 1970s New York, how it gained in popularity over the decades, and its rise to global sensation in the twenty-first century.

"A biography of the late Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry from New York Times bestselling author Tracy Daugherty. In over forty books, in a career that spanned over sixty years, Larry McMurtry staked his claim as a superior chronicler of the American West, and as the Great Plains' keenest witness since Willa Cather and Wallace Stegner. Larry McMurtry: A Life traces his origins as one of the last American writers...

Is there a song that changed your life? NPR's music authority Bob Boilen posed that question to some of today's best-loved musical legends and rising stars. In their answers the artists reflect on pivotal moments that inspired their work.

Professor Weinstein of Brown University presents eighty-four lectures on the great classics of American literature, showing how such authors as Irving, Poe, Thoreau, Hemingway, and Faulkner bring the past to life, changing as each generation steps forward to interpret it anew.