Unwrapping the Message

KEVIN YOUNG: Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois’s The Anthology of Rap

In the Context of No Content

HEATHER HAVRILESKY: Emily Herbert’s Lady Gaga: Behind the Fame, Maureen Callahan’s Poker Face: The Rise and Rise of Lady Gaga, and Lizzy Goodman’s Lady Gaga: Critical Mass Fashion

Anxiety Over Influence

GARY GIDDINS: Lewis Hyde’s Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership

Been A Long Time

VICTOR LAVALLE: Stephen Davis’s LZ-’75: The Lost Chronicles of Led Zeppelin’s 1975 American Tour

The Titan

JOSHUA KOSMAN: Norman Lebrecht’s Why Mahler? How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed Our World

Her Jazz

JOHANNA FATEMAN: Sara Marcus’s Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution

Thy Song is Strong

ERIC ORMSBY: John Bevis’s Aaaaw to Zzzzzd: The Words of Birds, North America, Britain, and Northern Europe and the British Library’s Secret Songs of Birds: The Hidden Beauty of Birdsong Revealed

Sound and Vision

PETER TERZIAN: Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell’s For the Love of Vinyl: The Album Art of Hipgnosis, Johnny Morgan and Ben Wardle’s The Art of the LP: Classic Album Covers 1955–1995, Suzette Newman and Chris Salewicz’s The Story of Island Records: Keep on Running, and Spencer Drate and Judith Salavetz’s Five Hundred 45s: A Graphic History of the Seven-Inch Record

Sing, Muse

ALEC HANLEY BEMIS: Kristin Hersh’s Rat Girl

RHETT MILLER writes a letter to Bob Dylan

MICHAEL GREENBERG goes to Tbilisi, Georgia

MELANIE REHAK on The Essential New York Times Cookbook

PUB DATES

LIZ BROWN: Eileen Myles’s Inferno

MINNA PROCTOR: Nicole Krauss’s Great House

ERIK MORSE: Jean-Christophe Valtat’s Aurorarama

TOM LECLAIR: Daniel Kehlmann’s Fame

WENDY S. WALTERS: Thomas Sayers Ellis’s Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair Poems

JUSTIN TAYLOR: Matthew Sharpe’s You Were Wrong

RACHEL KUSHNER: Tom McCarthy’s C

JOSHUA COHEN: Tao Lin’s Richard Yates

ANDREW MEIER: C. J. Chivers’s The Gun: The AK-47 and the Evolution of War

RACHEL SHTEIR: Jennifer Homans’s Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet

NATHAN LEE: Werner Spies’s David Lynch—Dark Splendor and Patrice Forest’s David Lynch—Lithos 2007–2009

WILLIAM DERESIEWICZ: Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom

GEOFF DYER: Thomas Bernhard’s My Prizes: An Accounting

MACY HALFORD: Brenda Maddox’s George Eliot in Love

J. C. GABEL: Steven Heller and Elaine Lustig Cohen’s Born Modern: The Life and Design of Alvin Lustig

BEN KAFKA: Craig Robertson’s The Passport in America: The History of a Document

BRIAN THOMAS GALLAGHER: Maryjean Wall’s How Kentucky Became Southern: A Tale of Outlaws, Horse Thieves, Gamblers, and Breeders

JONATHAN BLITZER: Ronald Fraser’s In Hiding: The Life of Manuel Cortés

ALBERT MOBILIO: Richard Misrach’s Destroy This Memory

DAVID O’NEILL: James Hamilton’s You Should Have Heard Just What I Seen

Peter Trachtenberg talks with Frederic Tuten

SUZY HANSEN: Stephen Kinzer‘s Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future and Scott Peterson‘s Let the Swords Encircle Me: Iran—A Journey Behind the Headlines

THOMAS MEANEY: V. S. Naipaul‘s The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief

RICHARD HELL: Ted Berrigan‘s Dear Sandy, Hello: Letters from Ted to Sandy Berrigan

GEOFF NICHOLSON: Justin Spring‘s Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade and An Obscene Diary: The Visual World of Sam Steward

MARTHA BAYNE: James Ellroy‘s The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women

ERIC BANKS: Roland Barthes‘s Mourning Diary

JACK SHAFER: H. L. Mencken‘s Prejudices: The Complete Series