Criticism category: 58377 books

"Mach has produced a book of uncommon interest." — Washington Post "Mach's interviews will enhance the pleasure of any concertgoer." — People In this rich collection of fascinating interviews with 25 of the world's greatest pianists of the contemporary era, Elyse Mach has chosen...

Between 1968 - 1980 Led Zeppelin performed over 500 concerts in every corner of the world, establishing themselves as the most popular live rock attraction of their era. This book explores in great detail the in-concert history of one of the most successful bands of all time.

Clashing together outrageous musical influences and extravagantly visual imagery, Queen's place in history as the greatest glam band of them all is rock solid. Their fan base continues to grow, a decade and a half on from the death of Freddie Mercury, Queen's super-charismatic front man. Georg...

Stereo is everywhere. The whole culture and industry of music and sound became organized around the principle of stereophony during the twentieth century. But nothing about this-not the invention or acceptance or ubiquity of stereo-was inevitable. Nor did the aesthetic conventions, technological objects,...

Recognized for its distinctive musical features and its connection to periods of social innovation and ferment, the genre of psychedelia has exerted long-term influence in many areas of cultural production, including music, visual art, graphic design, film, and literature. William Echard explores...

Emerging from the same British music boom that birthed the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, Dave and Ray Davies’s band, the Kinks, became one of England’s most influential groups. Remembered best for such singles as “You Really Got Me,” “Lola,” and “Sunny Afternoon,” the Kinks produced...

Thomas Beecham was one of Britain's greatest conductors of orchestral music and opera as well as an entrepreneur and impresario of exceptional energy and brilliant wit. This new life places him - musically, politically and socially - in the troubled times in which he lived and corrects the stories...

A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice and Nominated for the 2017 PEN/Bograd Weld Prize for Biography A captivating exploration of A. E. Housman and the influence of his particular brand of Englishness A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad made little impression when it was first...

Philip Larkin met Monica Jones at University College Leicester in autumn 1946, when they were both twenty-four; he was the newly-appointed assistant librarian and she was an English lecturer. In 1950 Larkin moved to Belfast, and thence to Hull, while Monica remained in Leicester, becoming by turns...

Christopher Murray’s definitive study of Seán O’Casey, the last great writer of the Irish literary revival, provides a strong interpretative context for his life. Murray looks afresh at the Dublin of the 1880s and 1890s in order to provide an authoritative background to O’Casey’s childhood....

18 November, 1741. George Frideric Handel, one of the world’s greatest composers, arrives in Dublin – the second city of the Empire – to prepare his masterpiece, Messiah, for its maiden performance the following spring … In Hallelujah, Jonathan Bardon, one of Ireland’s leading historians,...

Louis MacNeice is increasingly recognised as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, and his work has been a defining influence upon a generation of Irish poets that includes Derek Mahon, Michael Longley and Paul Muldoon. The Selected Letters is indispensable as a resource for an...

The book comprises a selection of some 750 letters of the composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams, selected from an extant corpus of about 3,300. The letters are arranged chronologically and have been chosen to provide a cumulative pen-picture of the composer in his own words. In general the letters reflect...

"Roger Ebert's "criticism shows a nearly unequaled grasp of film history and technique, and formidable intellectual range." --New York TimesPulitzer Prize-winning film critic Roger Ebert presents more than 500 full-length critical movie reviews, along with interviews, essays, tributes, journal...