The Best Books of 2024
PopMatters Best Books of 2024 include a broad range of nonfiction, many books on music, short fiction, a novel that turns a Mark Twain classic inside out, and much more.
Best Books 2024
Jazz’s Historical Agenda as Protest Music in the Stellar ‘Brassroots Democracy’
The excellent Brassroots Democracy details the beautiful and bleak ways that jazz music created the soundtrack of an emancipatory movement that lasts to this day.
Arthur Russell’s Underground Genius
Arthur Russell biography Travels Over Feeling is an elegy for a generation of underground artists that died too soon and a requiem for a vanished New York.
Graeme Thomson’s Revised ‘Under the Ivy’ Captures Kate Bush’s Complexity
While Kate Bush’s work and life defy clichés and easy categorization, Graeme Thomson chronicles her story while conveying its inherent ambiguity and mystery.
‘The Theatrical Adventures of Edward Gorey’ Is Spectacular
Creator of the iconic PBS Masterpiece Mystery! title sequence, Edward Gorey’s artistic sensibility and wicked humor continuously inspires creators across many mediums.
Greil Marcus Explains Why Creativity Is Better Left Unexplained
In What Nails It Greil Marcus delivers a philosophical treatise wherein fact and fiction merge into poetic indeterminacy, like a nebulous 1960s garage rock tune.
Dubravka Ugrešić Bites the Hand That Muzzles Women
In the grimly funny collection of conversations in Muzzle for Witches, Dubravka Ugrešić bites the hand that muzzles women.
Asian American Pop Culture Stands on the Shoulders of a Giant Robot
Today’s Asian American pop culture stands on the shoulders of Giant Robot, a beloved zine that published an eclectic mix of artists and subjects.
The Rise and Fall of New York’s Bohemian Capital Greenwich Village
Based on 150 interviews with folk music notables, David Browne’s Talkin’ Greenwich Village lends this saga in music history the epic scope it has long deserved.
Whatever Happened to That Amazing British Punk Band Buzzcocks?
Steve Diggle’s Buzzcocks autobiography Autonomy is a refreshing take in an era when punk’s political and social consequences tend to be over-analyzed.
The Journey Motif in ‘The Half-Life of Guilt’ Is No Guilt Trip
There is no guilty pleasure in reading Lynn Stegner’s The Half-Life of Guilt. There is only pleasure.
The Complicated Life of Moby Grape’s Skip Spence
This bio about Moby Grape’s Skip Spence dissects and casts a glowing light on his work as a composer of some of the most influential music of San Francisco’s psychedelic scene.