Bloomsbury: 14715 books

In Paris's Père-Lachaise cemetery, Jim Morrison's graffiti-scrawled tombstone is a place of pilgrimage for local devotees, adolescent hedonists and wayward backpackers alike. Found dead in his bathtub aged only 27 having achieved worldwide stardom as lead singer of The Doors, Morrison was quickly...

Diane Arbus was one of the most brilliant and revered photographers in the history of American art. Her portraits, in stark black and white, seemed to reveal the psychological truths of their subjects. But after she committed suicide at the age of 48, the presumed chaos and darkness of her own inner...

The guitarists' guitarist and the songwriters' songwriter, the legendary Bert Jansch has influenced stars as diverse as Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Paul Simon, Sandy Denny, Nick Drake, Donovan, Pete Townshend, Neil Young, Bernard Butler, Beth Orton and Laura Marling. Unassuming, enigmatic and completely...

This is the album that sent a shockwave of empowerment through the nation's cultural underground. In 1985, Olympia, Washington band Beat Happening released their eponymous debut of lo-fi pop songs on K Records and challenged every conception held about music. At the center of the group was the enigmatic...

On their debut, The Clash famously claimed to be "bored with the USA,†? but The Clash wasn't a parochial record. Mick Jones' licks on songs such as "Hate and War†? were heavily influenced by classic American rock and roll, and the cover of Junior Murvin's reggae hit "Police and...

Although David Bowie has famously characterized himself as a "leper messiah," a more appropriate moniker might be "rock god": someone whose influence has crossed numerous sub-genres of popular and classical music and can at times seem ubiquitous. By looking at key moments in his...

In 1978, San Francisco, a city that has seen more than its share of trauma, plunged from a summer of political tension into an autumn cascade of malevolence that so eluded human comprehension it seemed almost demonic. The battles over property taxes and a ballot initiative calling for a ban on homosexuals...

Following hard on the explosion of British punk, in 1979 Gang of Four produced post-punk's smartest record, Entertainment! For the first time, a band wedded punk's angry energy to funk's propulsive beats-and used that music to put across lyrics that brought a heady mixture of Marxist theory and situationism...

Christian metal has always defined itself in contrast to its non-Christian, secular counterpart, yet it stands out from nearly all other forms of contemporary Christian music through its unreserved use of metal's main musical, visual, and aesthetic traits. Christian metal is a rare example of a direct...

Overpaid players. Sunday lunchtime kick-offs. Absurd ticket prices. Non-black boots. Football's menu of ills is long. Where has the joy gone? Why do we bother? Saturday, 3pm offers a glorious antidote. It is here to remind you that football can still sing to your heart. Warm, heartfelt and...

It is spring in the year of 118, and Hadrian has been Emperor of Rome for less than a year. After getting involved with the murders of local prostitutes in the town of Deva, Doctor Gaius Petreius Ruso needs to get out of town, so has volunteered for a posting with the Army on the volatile border where...

Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest examines how the Eurovision Song Contest has reflected and become intertwined with the history of postwar Europe from a political perspective. Established in 1956, the Eurovision Song Contest is the world's largest popular music event and one of...

U2 and the Religious Impulse examines indications in U2's music and performances that the band work at conscious and subconscious levels as artists who focus on matters of the spirit, religious traditions, and a life guided by both belief and doubt. U2 is known for a career of stirring songs,...

In Paris's Père-Lachaise cemetery, Jim Morrison's graffiti-scrawled tombstone is a place of pilgrimage for local devotees, adolescent hedonists, and wayward backpackers alike. Found dead in his bathtub at only twenty-seven, having achieved worldwide stardom as lead singer of the Doors, Morrison was...