Review

“Sound Recording traces the development of sound technology in the US and Europe from the first demonstration of the phono-autograph in 1857 to the latest MP3 technology. Morton skillfully blends a basic understanding of the physical principles involved in recording sound waves with an interesting chronological account that examines the cultural and economic issues affecting the development of sound technology. The inclusion of the discoveries of European inventors adds (more…)

Amazon.com Review

Wanted: Young, photogenic writer with one year of experience as an assistant to Hollywood power players to pen easy-reading, summer novel about same. If the publisher had run this advertisement to find an author for Robin Lynn Williams’ debut novel, The Assistants, they would have gotten all that and an innovator to boot. Rather than content herself with the established axiom of Assistant Lit–one lowly assistant, one mean boss–she presents five attractive (more…)

From Booklist

Rock and roll has proven itself to be a paradigm-making art form, an irresistible vehicle for romance and angst, fantasy and rebellion, idealism and irony. Rock’s yin-yang capacity for celebrating good times and self-destructiveness, egomania and love for the universe, sexuality and sentimentality knows no bounds, and rock has profoundly influenced everything in its orbit, from advertisements to movies to literature. Editor Sawyers, whose many books include Racing i (more…)

Webster’s bibliographic and event-based timelines are comprehensive in scope, covering virtually all topics, geographic locations and people. They do so from a linguistic point of view, and in the case of this book, the focus is on “Home,” including when used in literature (e.g. all authors that might have Home in their name). As such, this book represents the largest compilation of timeline events associated with Home when it is used in proper noun form. Webster’s timelines cov (more…)

Webster’s bibliographic and event-based timelines are comprehensive in scope, covering virtually all topics, geographic locations and people. They do so from a linguistic point of view, and in the case of this book, the focus is on “Items,” including when used in literature (e.g. all authors that might have Items in their name). As such, this book represents the largest compilation of timeline events associated with Items when it is used in proper noun form. Webster’s timelines (more…)

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From Library Journal

Shiner ( Slam , LJ 8/1/90, among others) has written what may be the first rock n roll time-travel novel. Ray Chackleford is a self-employed electronics repairman whose marriage is foundering and whose father has recently died. These unresolved relationships are complicated when Ray travels to the Mexican site of his father’s death and promptly falls in love with a woman even more unstable than he. In the midst of this emotional turmoil, Ray–a rock drummer d (more…)

From Library Journal

Unique among major rock bands, the Dead actively sanctioned the taping of live concerts. This policy nurtured a subculture of Deadheads who have traded thousands of tapes over the years. This is the second of a projected three volume series documenting every known live Grateful Dead recording in circulation. (The first volume, covering the years 1959-74, appeared in 1998.) Getz, a poet and lyricist, and Dwork, a rock music scholar, divide the book into three (more…)

Easter Sunday, 1973: Just before dawn in Kingsburg, California, six-year-old Gordon Swannson, asthmatic boy genius, gets his ass kicked by a spectral Easter Bunny-an event that sends his already hyperactive imagination spiraling toward paranoia. Gordon becomes convinced that ghosts and other weird entities inhabit a daimonic reality that can interact with our everyday world. He starts seeing mystery and danger everywhere in his isolated farming community. He even thinks his best (more…)

From Publishers Weekly

What Sullivan’s oral history of alternative music giants R.E.M. (”Losing My Religion”) lacks in intimacy, it more than makes up for in personality. Prevented from interviewing band members and their families, Sullivan went after old hometown friends, record-label business associates and members of bands that at one time or another shared a concert bill with Athens, Ga.’s favorite sons. The interviewees who seem distant from the band professionally are often (more…)