Music - Philosophy & Social Aspects

The Innerspace of Outerspace explores music as a form of magic - a portal that dissolves ordinary reality and opens onto myth, mystery, and transformation. Tracing a lineage from ancient incantations and shamanic chants to modern visionaries like Sun Ra, the book shows how...

Everything you wanted to know about country, from the men and women who put the music on the map, to the genres, guitars and history, to the greatest hits of all time. From the early beginnings of bluegrass, cowboys and Aussie bush balladeers through...

A beautifully illustrated exploration of the strangest areas of music from around the world, from the author of the critically acclaimed bestsellers The Phantom Atlas, The Madman's Library, and The Devil's Atlas.Join author Edward Brooke-Hitching on a backstage tour of the most surprising and...

In American popular music, we often glorify rebellious artists and "outlaws." But in The Midnight Special, Colin Asher tells a deeper story about the criminal justice system's impact on our musicians, explored through compelling portraits of five artists whose careers span the twentieth century.Opening...

This book examines nearly every measure of The Ring by analyzing the uses of Leitmotives and how they relate one to another. Although it pinpoints thousands of individual moments, its real value lies in enhancing our appreciation of the work as a whole: to...

From National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author Sam Quinones, the story of a demanding instrument, the determined people who play it, and the hope they offer a fractured nation. The tuba's sound is mighty, emerging, it seems, from deep in the human body. Very...

Music has been examined from multiple perspectives: as a product of human history, for example, or a product of human culture. But there is also a long tradition, intensified in recent decades, of thinking about music as a product of the human mind. Whether...

For readers of Oliver Sacks and Being Mortal by Atul Gawande comes a "shimmery account of performing ... for a series of patients with varied afflictions, including the inevitable final one."--New York Times A celebrated art therapist plays the cello for her patients--and offers...

No other art is as popular--or pervasive--as music. With just a few clicks, anyone can cue up (and critique) Chopin or Cher, The Bangles or The Beatles--even the brand-new Beyoncé. But things weren't always this way.In this brisk, breakneck history under 300 pages, award-winning...

OVER THE LAST SEVEN DECADES, some of rock 'n' roll's most celebrated figureheads have flirted with the imagery and theater of the Third Reich. From Keith Moon and Vivian Stanshall kitting themselves out in Nazi uniforms to Siouxsie Sioux and Sid Vicious brandishing swastikas...

Reliving past heartbreak. Picturing a serene future. Imagining a fantastical scene. Across genres, music has an uncanny ability to carry us into distinct inner worlds. In Transported, acclaimed music cognition researcher Elizabeth Margulis explores the phenomenon of musical daydreams--the vivid, spontaneous, emotionally charged images,...

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLISTNPR "BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR" SELECTIONNEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE A virtuosic debut from a gifted violinist searching for a new mode of artistic becomingHow does time shape consciousness and consciousness, time? Do we live in time, or does time...

For most of his career, the Emmy Award-winning composer and producer Lucas Cantor Santiago was a self-described luddite. Technology, he felt, was moving too fast, transforming the world and the arts with no regard for the cost in tradition, hard-won human wisdom, and tried-and-true...

From the glamorous depravity of Studio 54 to the underground cabarets of Weimar Berlin, from Georgian London's gaudy pleasure gardens to the birth of techno in post-industrial Detroit, a brilliantly researched history charting four centuries of nightlife, showing the fascinating evolution of how humans...

Let's be real: Caring for a baby can be exhaustingly tedious. Enter Vered Benhorin, musician, therapist, and mother of three. In What Do I Do with My Baby All Day?, Benhorin builds on the foundations of attachment theory and blends practical tools with research...

"The coolest class on campus" - The New York Times***Revised and updated with a new Afterword from the author.***When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan in 2016, a debate raged. Some celebrated, while many others questioned the choice. How could...

"The coolest class on campus" - The New York Times***Revised and updated with a new Afterword from the author.***When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan in 2016, a debate raged. Some celebrated, while many others questioned the choice. How could...

A poignant consideration of the material aspect of sound and how it fundamentally shapes our experience of the world, both in its presence and absence From the joyous communal connections fostered through shared auditory experience to the devastating impact of noise pollution in the...

Hear "American Girl" or "Born in the U.S.A." and, like it or not, chances are you begin to hum along. The soundtrack of grocery stores, pool halls, bowling alleys, flea markets, chain restaurants, drug stores, and political rallies--heartland rock, while beloved by some and...