Book Reviews
- A Change Is Gonna Come: Brian Ward's Just My Soul Responding
- A Class Act: Roddy Doyle's The Woman Who Walked Into Doors
- A Darker Shade of Noir: Walter Mosley
- A New (Rock) Polarity: Simon Reynolds and Joy Press's The Sex Revolts
- A Slender Hope for Salvation: Charles A. Reich: The Greening of America
- Aptitude Adjustment: Nicholas Lemann's The Big Test
- Arthur Kempton: Boogaloo: The Quintessence of American Popular Music
- Autobiography of a Pain in the Neck: Meredith Maran's What It's Like to Live Now
- Biztime Stories: Bruce Feiler and Ronin Ro
- Black Melting Pot: David B. Coplan, In Township Tonight!
- Bouton Baseball: Jim Bouton's Ball Four
- But Seriously, Folks: Mark Costello and David Foster Wallaces's Signifying Rappers
- Bwana-Acolyte in the Favor Bank: Banning Eyre's In Griot Time
- Christine Stansell's American Moderns
- Combat Rocker: Joe Strummer
- Confessions of an Aging Rock Critic: Jon Landau's It's Too Late to Stop Now
- Dave Hickey's Air Guitar
- Defining/Inventing/Exploiting the Folk: Benjamin Filene's Romancing the Folk
- Dialectic Cricket: C.L.R. James
- Ed Sanders: The Family
- Elvis Presley
- Folking Around: David Hajdu's Positively 4th Street
- Forward to Greil Marcus's Stranded
- Glossing Big-Tymers: Touré
- Great Books of Fire: Jerry Lee Lewis
- Growing Up Kept Down: William Finnegan's Cold New World
- History of the Sexual Century: John Heidenry's Such Wild Ecstasy
- In Search of Sam Cooke
- In the Crucible of the Party: Charles Keil's Bright Balkan Morning
- Inside Dope: Michael Eric Dyson's Between God and Gangsta Rap
- Inside the Prosex Wars: Nadine Strossen, Joanna Frueh, Laura Kipnis
- Inventing Punk: Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain's Please Kill Me
- It's Barely Rock and Roll, But I Like It: Simon Frith's Sound Effects
- Juju Beats: The Rise and Rise of African Music
- Just Enough Monkey Business
- Lestorian Lit
- Living in a Material World: Raymond Williams' Long Revolution
- Meaning Collectors: Chris Roberts's Idle Worship
- Michael Eric Tyson: Between God and Gangsta Rap
- Mikal Gilmore's Night Beat
- Mind Blower: Marco Vassi
- Money Isn't Everything: Fred Goodman's The Mansion on the Hill
- Music for Goniffs: Fredric Dannen's Hit Men
- Musicology: Craig Werner's Higher Ground
- Musicology: Ken Emerson
- Musicology: Michaelangelo Matos's Sign 'O' the Times
- Nevermore: Nirvana
- Outside Rock and Roll: John F. Szwed and Dave Hickey
- P.J. O'Rourke: Age and Guilt Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut
- Philosophy Practice: Livvy Lumpkin's Deep Design
- Pissed Off Voters: How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office
- Porn Yesterday: Walter Kendrick's The Secret Museum
- Radical Pluralist: Andrew Ross's No Respect
- Ramblin' Man: Coney Island Okie: Woody Guthrie
- Raptitude Tests: Hip Hop Moves to the Mainstream
- Real Ragtime: Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo
- Richard Brautigan: Sombrero Fallout
- Rock Bios
- Rock Critics
- Rock Music Is Here to Stay: Joe Carducci's Rock and the Pop Narcotic
- Roddy Doyle's The Commitments
- Salon Bookbag: The History of Pop
- Serious Music: Robert Walser's Running With the Devil
- Seven Music Books I Liked in 1996 in Roughly Descending Order
- Singing to Live: Helen Kivnick's Where Is the Way
- Slavery Days
- Speaking in Palindromes: Bruce Sterling's Zeitgeist
- Sterling Characters: Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire
- Sustainable Romance: Norman Rush's Mortals
- Sustaining Pleasures
- That Bad Man, Tough Old Huddie Ledbetter: Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell's The Life and Legend of Leadbelly
- The First Lady of Song: Billie Holiday
- The Inarticulate in Pursuit of the Indescribable: Simon Miller's The Last Post
- The Informer: John Leonard's When the Kissing Had to Stop
- The Little Counterculture That Could: Carol Brightman's Sweet Chaos
- The Old Ethiopians at Home: Ken Emerson's Doo-Dah!
- The Pop-Boho Connection: Bernard Gendron's Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club
- The Wolf I'm Beratin': David Vozar's Yo! Hungry Wolf
- Theory of the Rhythmic Class: Susan McClary's Feminine Endings
- Too Strait Are the Gates of Eden: Morris Dickstein's Gates of Eden
- Twentieth Century Limited: Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts Into Air
- Up From Darien: Charles Keil
- What Pretentious White Men Are Good For: Robert Coover's Gerald's Party
- Writing for the People: George Orwell's 1984
- You Could Look It Up