When Paul McCartney closed Live Aid in July of 1985, we thought he was rock's Grand Old Man. He was forty-three years old. As the forty years since have shown, he—and many others of his generation—were just getting started. This was the time when live performance took over from records. The big names of the '60s and '70s exploited the Age of Spectacle that Live Aid had ushered in to enjoy the longest lap of honor in the history of humanity, continuing to go strong long after everyone else in the business had retired.

Peter Wolf grew up in the Bronx, a child of “fellow travelers” whose artistic inclinations influenced both his love of music and his initial desire to become a painter. Stories of his loving and sometimes eccentric parents complement scenes depicting a very young Bob Dylan as he arrived on the Greenwich Village folk scene. Reflections on Wolf’s studies in Boston—where he shared an apartment with David Lynch—are braided with accounts of first love, an untraditional literary education, and early musical influences such as Muddy Waters.

The “Wild West” gunfighter is such a stock figure in our popular culture that some dismiss it all as a corny myth, more a product of dime novels and B movies than a genuinely important American history. In fact, as Bryan Burrough shows us in his dazzling and fast-paced new book, there’s much more below the surface. For three decades at the end of the 1800s, a big swath of the American West was a crucible of change, with the highest murder rate per capita in American history. The reasons behind this boil down to one word: Texas.

Mike Campbell was the lead guitarist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers from the band’s inception in 1976 to Petty’s tragic death in 2017. His iconic, melodic playing helped form the foundation of the band’s sound, as heard on definitive classics like “American Girl,” “Breakdown,” “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” “Learning to Fly” and “Into the Great Wide Open.”

Romans! Madrigals! The Dark Ages! Revolutions! Trumpets! The Oranges of The First World War! All of this (except trumpets) and more, is covered in this definitive, easy-clean history of all world history so far, written by the 21st Century's leading historian, philosopher and thinkerer Philomena Cunk.

Maurice and Maralyn make an odd couple. He’s a loner, awkward and obsessive; she’s charismatic and ambitious. But they share a horror of wasting their lives. And they dream – as we all dream – of running away from it all. What if they quit their jobs, sold their house, bought a boat, and sailed away? Most of us begin and end with the daydream. But Maurice began to study nautical navigation. Maralyn made detailed lists of provisions. And in June 1972, they set sail. For nearly a year all went well, until deep in the Pacific, a breaching whale knocked a hole in their boat and it sank.

Frida and Gabriel arrive seeking a fresh start at the stunning Ara Hotel in the secluded desert of Escalante, Utah. Once so close they were able to finish each other’s sentences, they’ve grown apart in recent years after a sudden, unspeakable tragedy. Now, at the luxe resort, they are ready to reconnect between dips in the pool and hikes on spectacular desert trails. It all feels like paradise—until the dead body of a beautiful young woman who was vacationing at the Ara with her powerful, much older husband is discovered.

History all too often neglects the tastes, textures, sounds, and smells that were an intimate part of our ancestors’ daily experience, but a new generation of researchers is resurrecting those hidden details, pioneering an exciting new discipline called experimental archaeology. These are scientists gone rogue: They make human mummies. They carve ancient spears and go hunting, then knap their own obsidian blades to skin the game.

Immigrating alone from Paris to New York after the crucible of World War II, young Gazala becomes friends with two spirited sisters, Anne and Alma. When Gazala’s lost, beloved brother, Samir, joins her in Manhattan, this contentious, inseparable foursome makes their way into the twenty-first century, becoming the beating heart of a multigenerational found family.

During the 1920s, dozens of expeditions scoured the Chinese and Tibetan wilderness in search of the panda bear, a beast that many believed did not exist. When the two eldest sons of President Theodore Roosevelt sought the bear in 1928, they had little hope of success. Together with a team of scientists and naturalists, they accomplished what a decade of explorers could not, ultimately introducing the panda to the West. In the process, they documented a vanishing world and set off a new era of conservation biology.

Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and ’80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly and nightmarishly gruesome? Why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing?

Loud and Clear is the first book to tell the full story of the Grateful Dead’s “Wall of Sound,” an unprecedented and since unparalleled speaker system that was as tall as a school bus is long and more than a hundred feet wide. The band’s quest for roaring yet crystal clear sound began after their formation in 1965, colliding with the ‘60s progressive social climate.

Every nation needs its creation myth, and since Texas was a nation before it was a state, it's no surprise that its myths bite deep. There's no piece of history more important to Texans than the Battle of the Alamo, when Davy Crockett and a band of rebels went down in a blaze of glory fighting for independence from Mexico, losing the battle but setting Texas up to win the war.

On June 4, 1984, Columbia Records issued what would become one of the best-selling and most impactful rock albums of all time. An instant classic, Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. would prove itself to be a landmark not only for the man who made it, but rock music in general, and even the larger American culture over the next 40 years.

New York Times bestselling author Bill Janovitz explores the musical, cultural, and commercial impact of The Cars, one of the biggest and most influential bands of the 1970s and 80s. With roots in Maryland, Ohio, New York, and New England, eventually convening in Boston, The Cars were journeymen musicians, all forming and performing in a series of bands before finding each other along with the right sound at the right time. It turned them into Rock and Roll Hall of Famers. Janovitz reveals the stories of each member of the band, and of the band as a unit, with great care and understanding.

As a member of Big in Japan, The Slits and, most famously, Siouxsie and The Banshees and The Creatures, 'Budgie' became one of the era-defining drummers in the much-mythologised post punk scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s. A man and musician whose creativity and singular style came to define the goth-pop 1980s as much as any other individual, Budgie's life is both fabulously glamorous and a tawdry cautionary tale. For the first time the story of this most exalted and mysterious of bands has been told by one who survived inside the belly of the beast.

“Psycho Killer.” “Take Me to the River.” “Road to Nowhere.” Few artists have had the lasting impact and relevance of Talking Heads. One of the foundational bands of downtown New York’s 1970s music scene, Talking Heads have endured as a musical and cultural force for decades, their unique brand of transcendent, experimental rock a lingering influence on popular music—despite having disbanded over thirty years ago. Now on the 50th anniversary of the band’s formation, acclaimed music biographer and contributor to The New Yorker Jonathan Gould offers the definitive story of Talking Heads.

Wanna know ALL the tea? Sorry, these lips are sealed until October.

Molly Jong-Fast is the only child of a famous woman, writer Erica Jong, whose sensational book Fear of Flying launched her into second-wave feminist stardom. She grew up yearning for a connection with her dreamy, glamorous, just out of reach mother, who always seemed to be heading somewhere that wasn’t with Molly. When, in 2023, Erica was diagnosed with dementia just as Molly’s husband discovered he had a rare cancer, Jong-Fast was catapulted into a transformative year.

As the guitarist and primary songwriter of Exodus and one of the originators of heavy metal, Gary Holt watched as his peers—Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax—soared to superstardom. As his fellow artists amassed millions of fans and record sales, Exodus' albums received critical recognition and inspired generations of listeners—but struggled to reach the same heights of success, as the band was plagued by years of bad management, bad luck, and bad decisions. A Fabulous Disaster follows our narrator through the highest of highs and lowest of lows.