Books like Mystery train by Greil Marcus

The Chitlin' Circuit traces the rise of rock 'n' roll in black America, showing how venues and performers like James Brown, B. B. King, and Little Richard honed their craft in the smoky back rooms that birthed a music revolution.

Invisible Republic traces the recordings Bob Dylan and the Band made in 1967 at Big Pink, exploring how these secret basement sessions reflected Dylan’s musical evolution and the cultural tensions of the 1960s.

Selects ten songs recorded between 1956 and 2008 that embody rock and roll as a thing in itself--in the story each song tells, inhabits, and creates in its legacy.

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.”

An intimate oral history of rock legend Warren Zevon, told by his wife Crystal Zevon and drawn from over eighty interviews with music and cultural icons.

Scotty Moore, the guitarist who first recorded Elvis Presley’s legendary "All Right," reveals the true story behind the birth of rock ’n’ roll and his own pioneering guitar style.