Roots Rock

Roots is a groundbreaking story of history and family that spanned continents and touched generations. One of the most important books and television series ever to appear, Roots galvanized the nation and created an extraordinary political, racial, social, and cultural dialogue that hadn’t been seen since the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The book sold more than one million copies in the first year, and the miniseries was watched by an astonishing 130 million people. It also won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

The Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd helped usher in a new kind of southern music from Jacksonville, Florida. Together, they and fellow bands like Blackfoot, 38 Special, and Molly Hatchet would reset the course of '70s rock. Yet Jacksonville seemed an unlikely hotbed for a new musical movement. Michael FitzGerald blends eyewitness detail with in-depth history to tell the story of how the River City bred this generation of legendary musicians.

Alex Lifeson has always stood in the shadows of rock’s spotlight—quietly, deliberately, and architecturally shaping one of the most inventive catalogs in music history. As the guitarist and co-founder of Rush, Lifeson built the sonic frameworks that carried Geddy Lee’s soaring melodies and Neil Peart’s intricate drumming, crafting a career defined by resilience, experimentation, and understated brilliance. Alex Lifeson: The Quiet Architect of Rush traces his journey from the son of Yugoslav immigrants in suburban Toronto to the world’s biggest stages. It explores the teenage ...

Ruby has no money, not a single friend, and a shocking 1925 felony conviction for larceny. Though she encounters betrayal, she embarks on a journey to re-enter her children’s lives that will test the core of her being as obstacles chip away at everything but her resilient spirit. Deceived by men, caught between survival, career opportunities, and providing for her children, Ruby’s enduring love and determination to rise above her mistakes resonates with anyone who has yearned for a second chance.

Levon Helm’s voice and drumming defined an era of American music. From his beginnings in the cotton fields of Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, to the global stages he commanded as a founding member of The Band, Helm’s life traced the turbulent evolution of rock, roots, and Americana. Levon Helm: The Band’s Southern Soul offers the definitive portrait of a man who carried the cadences of the South into the national imagination. This biography follows Helm’s journey year by year, uncovering the communal rhythms of his Arkansas childhood, his apprenticeship on the Southern roadhouse circuit, ...

Peter Wolf’s story is one of relentless energy, cultural fusion, and uncompromising devotion to performance. From Bronx street corners filled with doo-wop harmonies to Boston’s smoky clubs where the J. Geils Band first ignited their “houseparty sound,” Wolf emerged as one of the most distinctive frontmen in American rock. Peter Wolf: Centerfold traces his journey with detail, context, and vibrancy, showing how a boy with sketchbooks and radios grew into a singer who turned concerts into communal celebrations. Wolf’s years as a DJ at Boston University’s WBUR—when he christened ...

Life is hard for Ruby growing up in poverty on the wrong side of the mountain on her grandfather's farm where literally the sun didn’t shine. The Appalachian setting isn’t her friend as she searches for an easy life at the "tippy-top" with contentment and security. Ruby makes a series of bad decisions, causing her life to tumble into an unexpected outcome.

Peter Cetera’s voice is one of the most recognizable in popular music, a tenor that carried Chicago from their ambitious jazz-rock beginnings into global superstardom and later defined the romantic ballads of the 1980s. Peter Cetera is the definitive biography of a musician who helped reshape the sound of modern pop, balancing horn-driven experimentation with melodic sincerity and emotional power. Born in 1944 on Chicago’s South Side, Cetera grew up in a Polish-American household where polka, doo-wop, and Elvis Presley stirred his earliest musical curiosity. By the 1960s, he had ...

Steve Smith is not just the drummer who powered Journey’s biggest anthems—he is one of the most versatile rhythm architects of the last half century. Steve Smith — Separate Ways of Rhythm traces his story from a Massachusetts childhood in Whitman through the corps discipline of the 1970s, the crucible of Berklee College of Music, and the club circuits of Boston, into a career that spanned Jean-Luc Ponty’s fusion laboratories, the global stages of Journey, and the boundary-pushing ensembles of Vital Information. This definitive biography follows Smith’s evolution across every era: ...

Rick Savage’s story begins in the smoke-streaked steelworks of Sheffield and stretches to the roaring stadiums of the twenty-first century, where Def Leppard’s anthems still command tens of thousands of voices. Rick Savage: Animal Instinct is the definitive biography of one of rock’s most enduring and least understood figures—the bassist whose subtle basslines and stoic presence held one of the world’s biggest bands together for over four decades. Drawing on archival press, recording notes, and contemporaneous accounts, this book follows Savage’s journey chronologically, chapter...

Someone had noticed me. A secret admirer? A man with a good heart, who saw how much I actually do need help, even though I never admit it, and how much Sydney needs someone to teach her that men can be nice - that some of them stick around, no matter how hard life gets. Maybe I knew him. Maybe he's been around for a while. Maybe this is the beginning of a beautiful story - a romance full of hope and second chances and love.

Eric Singer’s story is the untold saga of modern rock endurance—a drummer who transformed from a Cleveland basement prodigy into the backbone of Kiss, one of the most theatrical bands in music history. Eric Singer: Beyond the Catman traces his journey with documentary precision, following him from early childhood shaped by Motown grooves and British rock radio to his relentless practice routines that forged stamina capable of powering stadiums. Singer’s career arc mirrors the evolution of rock itself. From smoky Cleveland clubs and his first national break with Lita Ford, to the ...

Ella’s childhood in the Highlands was always a mystery to her–a distant dream–and she had never really planned on going back. A few months after her mother's death and the end of another relationship, feeling heartbroken and lost, it all changed with the news that she was the beneficiary of a teashop from a late grandmother in Scotland.

Sex. Drugs. Loud music. Wild costumes. Dazzling light shows. These words can all describe a great rock concert or a hot dance club, but they were also part and parcel of the ancient cultural phenomenon known as the "Mystery religions". In this book, author Christopher Knowles shows how the long-dead Mystery religions got a secular reincarnation when a new musical form called rock 'n' roll burst onto the scene.

Big-hearted Dre Rustin fled her small Nebraska hometown to distance herself from her brother’s troubled past. Texas seemed like a good place to start a new life. Now she’s looking forward to graduating from college, but first she’s got to handle Thanksgiving break. She’ll head home for the first time in years.

Derek Trucks has been hailed as one of the greatest guitarists of his generation, a player whose slide phrasing channels both the ache of Delta blues and the transcendence of Indian raga. Slide into Spirit: Derek Trucks traces his extraordinary journey from Jacksonville prodigy to co-leader of the Tedeschi Trucks Band, one of the most powerful live ensembles in American music today. Born into Southern rock lineage in 1979, Trucks was performing in Florida clubs by the age of eleven, astonishing veteran musicians with fluid phrasing and uncanny maturity. As a teenager, he toured with blues ...

Boz Scaggs has always resisted easy labels. From his earliest days in Dallas, where late-night rhythm-and-blues broadcasts captivated his imagination, to his emergence as a polished yet soulful voice in American rock, Scaggs built a career on balancing grit with elegance. This biography tells his story in full, tracing a life in music that spanned adolescent dance bands, a pivotal partnership with Steve Miller, years of travel across Europe, and the crucible of San Francisco’s late-1960s music scene. With uncommon detail, it follows his break from the Steve Miller Band to record his 1969 ...

Malcolm Young was never the flashiest member of AC/DC, yet he was the engine that drove one of the most successful rock bands in history. Malcolm Young — For Those About To is the first definitive, documentary-grade biography of the man whose right hand defined rock rhythm. From his birth in postwar Glasgow in 1953, through the family’s “Ten Pound Passage” to Australia, to the formative years spent in suburban sheds where he hammered downstrokes into unyielding precision, Malcolm’s story is told with archival rigor and narrative force. The book chronicles the founding of AC/DC in ...

Robbie Robertson’s journey from Toronto’s Yonge Street clubs to the world’s grandest stages is one of the most remarkable sagas in modern music. Born Jaime Royal Robertson in 1943 to a Mohawk mother and Jewish father, he grew up surrounded by traditions of storytelling, resilience, and rhythm. That cultural inheritance shaped the way he approached guitar and songwriting, giving rise to one of the most distinctive voices in twentieth-century rock. This definitive biography follows Robertson year by year, tracing how a boy entranced by blues records became the architect of The Band’s ...

Robbie Krieger has always been the quiet revolutionary of The Doors. While Jim Morrison embodied fire and volatility, and Ray Manzarek carried intellectual ambition, it was Krieger’s understated guitar voice that bound their sound together. His flamenco foundations, modal explorations, and lyrical restraint shaped the very DNA of songs like “Light My Fire,” “Love Me Two Times,” and “Spanish Caravan.” Yet his story has too often been overshadowed by Morrison’s myth. Robbie Krieger: The Doors’ Lyric Guitarist is the definitive biography of one of rock’s most inventive yet ...