Books like Rock She Wrote by Evelyn McDonnell

Patti Smith’s memoir charts her life in New York City, from the bohemian scenes of Max’s Kansas City and the Hotel Chelsea to a creative partnership with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in Brooklyn.

Kim Gordon, founding member of Sonic Youth, shares her memoir of life as an artist, musician, mother and pioneer of alternative rock, charting her journey from California roots to the New York underground of the 1980s and 1990s.

In the 1990s, as alternative rock exploded onto MTV, music journalist Rob Sheffield meets Renée, an Appalachian punk‑rock icon. Their shared love of music turns into love, heartbreak, and a memoir built around fifteen mixtapes.

An in‑depth, chronological survey of women’s impact on rock, pop, and R&B from the 1950s to the 2000s, featuring profiles of iconic singers and an insider look at the industry.

Interviews with the Beach Boys, their collaborators, and fans reveal the stories behind fifty of the band's songs, including "Surfin' U.S.A.," "California Girls," and "Good Vibrations."

What the Body Told is the second book of poetry from Rafael Campo, a practicing physician, a gay Cuban American, and winner of the National Poetry Series 1993 Open Competition. Exploring the themes begun in his first book, The Other Man Was Me, Campo extends the search for identity into new realms of fantasy and physicality. He travels inwardly to the most intimate spaces of the imagination where sexuality and gender collide and where life crosses into death. Whether facing a frenetic hospital emergency room to assess a patient critically ill with AIDS, or breathing in the quiet of his mother’s closet, Campo proposes with these poems an alternative means of healing and exposes the extent to which words themselves may be the most vital working parts of our bodies. The secret truths in What the Body Told, as the title implies, are already within each of us; in these vivid and provocative poems, Rafael Campo gives them a voice. Lost in the Hospital It’s not that I don’t like the hospital. Those small bouquets of flowers, pert and brave. The smell of antiseptic cleansers. The ill, so wistful in their rooms, so true. My friend, the one who’s dying, took me out To where the patients go to smoke, IV’s And oxygen tanks attached to them— A tiny patio for skeletons. We shared A cigaratte, which was delicious but Too brief. I held his hand; it felt Like someone’s keys. How beautiful it was, The sunlight pointing down at us, as if We were important, full of life, unbound. I wandered for a moment where his ribs Had made a space for me, and there, beside The thundering waterfall of is heart, I rubbed my eyes and thought “I’m lost.”

Informed by John Covachs skills as a teacher, music theorist, and performer, Whats That Sound? provides a balanced, deeply musical look at rock from its roots to the present. Offering strong coverage of the music business, rocks visual culture, and contemporary music, the text is complemented by listening guides to over 70 major works.

The Runaways, a groundbreaking all‑female rock band of the 1970s, forged a path for future girl groups with four albums, world tours, and a fearless, pre‑punk attitude that prefigured the riot grrrl movement.