I’ve drawn a lot of inspiration from David Halberstam’s sports books over the years.
Here, Halberstam uses Michael Jordan’s talent and relentless drive to frame a story of how sports both reflects and shapes culture. I grew up in this era—the 1980s/90s NBA—and I relive it each time I re-read Playing for Keeps (every few years, including this past). Halberstam’s prose hits me just right and captures beautifully what I saw and experienced in real time.
Playing for Keeps is also a study of leadership—how teams maximize their individual talents toward group achievement, a frame that comes in handy for this music historian.
In Playing for Keeps, David Halberstam takes the first full measure of Michael Jordan's epic career, one of the great American stories of our time. A narrative of astonishing power and human drama, brimming with revealing anecdotes and penetrating insights, the book chronicles the forces in Jordan's life that have shaped him into history's greatest basketball player, and the larger forces that have converged to make him the most famous living human being in the world.
From The Breaks of the Game to Summer of '49, David Halberstam has brought the perspective of a great historian, the inside knowledge of…
I picked this one up for $1 at the Clearwater Public Library. Boy am I glad I did!
Patoski’s Willie Nelson biography is a thorough, delightful read that really captures Nelson as an artist, a human being, and a visionary—a cultural juggernaut whose tremendous impact on American music extends well beyond songwriting and performing such as his annual 4th of July Picnics and founding of Farm Aid.
Even more remarkable to me is the fact that Willie has made 15 (and counting) more years of history since the book’s original publication. I’m looking forward to Volume II.
From his first performance at the age of five, Willie Nelson has been driven to make music and live life on his own terms. But though he is a songwriter of exceptional depth - CRAZY was one of his classics - Willie found success only after abandoning Nashville and moving to Austin, Texas, where he created an instantly recognisable new country music. A craggy-faced, pot-smoking philosopher-romantic easily identified by his signature bandanna, pigtails and battered guitar, Wilie Nelson is one of America's greatest country singers. Joe Nick Patoski draws on more than one hundred interviews with Willie and his family,…
I’m a sucker for a good Beatles’ read, and Help! delivered.
It’s my favorite type of music history book: a new lens (songwriting) through which to view a subject I don’t know well (Duke Ellington) alongside one I’m well-acquainted with (the Fabs).
Brothers’ book is packed with detailed explanation of the artist’s songwriting, arranging, publishing, and production processes. His insights taught me a tremendous amount about the larger context and process of songcraft and collaboration.
The Beatles and Duke Ellington's Orchestra stand as the two greatest examples of collaboration in music history. Thomas Brothers delivers a portrait of the creative process at work, demonstrating that the cooperative method at the foundation of these two artist-groups was the primary reason for their unmatched musical success.
While clarifying the historical record of who wrote what, with whom and how, Brothers brings the past to life with photos, anecdotes and more than thirty years of musical knowledge, and analysis of songs from "Strawberry Fields Forever" to "Chelsea Bridge". Help! describes in rich detail the music and mastery of…
The origin story of a groundbreaking album. The Allman Brothers Band’s 1971 album At Fillmore East was a musical manifesto years in the making. Play All Night! Duane Allman and the Journey to Fillmore East dives deep into the motivations and musical background of Duane Allman, the band’s founder, to tell the story of what made this album not just a smash hit, but one of the most important albums in history.
Play All Night explores how At Fillmore East cemented Duane’s legacy as a strong-willed, self-taught visionary, giving fans of Southern rock and all readers interested in the role of rock music in American popular culture a new appreciation for this pathbreaking album and a band that endured 43-years after his death.
