Continuum imprint: 595 books

Derided as one-hit wonders, estranged from their original producer and record label, and in self-imposed exile in Los Angeles, the Beastie Boys were written off by most observers before even beginning to record their second album - an embarrassing commercial flop that should have ruined the group's...

R.E.M.'s debut album, released in 1983, was so far removed from the prevailing trends of American popular music that it still sounds miraculous and out of time today. J. Niimi tells the story of the album's genesis - with fascinating input from Don Dixon and Mitch Easter. He also investigates Michael...

Though Nevermind was Nirvana's most commercially successful album, and the record that broke them - and the grunge phenomenon - internationally, In Utero has increasingly become regarded as the band's best album, both by the critics and the band members themselves. Instead of sticking to the "grunge...

Neil Young's Harvest is one of those strange albums that has achieved lasting success without ever winning the full approval of rock critics or hardcore fans. Even Young himself has been equivocal, describing it in one breath as his "finest" album, dismissing it in the next as an MOR aberration....

Pet Sounds is, rightly, one of the most celebrated pop albums ever released. It has also been written about, pored over, and analyzed more than most other albums put together. In this disarming book, Jim Fusilli focuses primarily on the emotional core of the album, on Brian Wilson's pitch-perfect...

A fully illustrated oral history of the Magnetic Fields' 1999 triple album, 69 Love Songs - an album that was afforded "classic" status by many almost as soon as it was released. LD Beghtol's book is chatty, incestuous, funny, dark, digressive, sexy, maddening, and delightful in...

At a time when fundamentalism is on the rise, traditional religions are in decline and postmodernity has challenged any system that claims to be all-defining, young people have left their traditional places of worship and set up their own, in clubs, at festivals and within music culture. Pop...

Highway 61 Revisited resonates because of its enduring emotional appeal. Few songwriters before Dylan or since have combined so effectively the intensely personal with the spectacularly universal. In "Like a Rolling Stone," his gleeful excoriation of Miss Lonely (Edie Sedgwick? Joan Baez?...

Covering the five centuries from Shakespeare's Bankside playhouses to today's West End, Paul Ibell's Theatreland explores the history and current state of the London stage, taking the reader through the streets and alleyways of the theatre capital of the world.   London's theatre district is quite...

What could be more punk rock than a band that never changed, a band that for decades punched out three-minute powerhouses in the style that made them famous? The Ramones' repetition and attitude inspired a genre, and Ramones set its tone. Nicholas Rombes examines punk history, with the recording of...

What resonated about Endtroducing when it was released in 1996, and what makes it still resonate today, is the way in which it loosens itself from the mooring of the known and sails off into an uncharted territory that seems to exist both in and out of time. Josh Davis is not only a master sampler...

Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life offers an expansive reading of auditory life. It provides a careful consideration of the performative dynamics inherent to sound culture and acts of listening, and discusses how auditory studies may illuminate understandings of contemporary society....

The Dominicans are to be found in every part of the world and engaged in every sort of activity, from fighting for justice and peace to painting and poetry. They live on many frontiers, of the Church and of the World, of the rich and of the poor, of the West and East, and these are places of growth...

An eviscerating look at the state of journalism in the age of the 24 hour news cycle by a Pulitzer Prize-winning television critic and a veteran news correspondent. No Time To Think focuses on the insidious and increasing portion of the news media that, due to the dangerously extreme speed...