Big Bangs
by Howard Goodall | 
Hotel California
by Barney Hoskyns | 
Respect Yourself
by Robert Gordon | 
The Violin Maker
by John Marchese | 
The Cello Suites
by Eric Siblin |
Yeah Yeah Yeah
by Bob Stanley | 
How Music Works
by David Byrne |
Last Night a DJ Saved My Life
by Bill Brewster |
Otis Redding
by Jonathan Gould | 
Can't Stop Won't Stop
by Jeff Chang | 
Sound of the Beast
by Ian Christe |
The Chitlin' Circuit
by Preston Lauterbach | 
You Never Give Me Your Money
by Peter Doggett | 
Laurel Canyon
by Michael Walker | 
Black Metal
by Dayal Patterson | 
The Castrato and His Wife
by Helen Berry |
The Wrecking Crew
by Kent Hartman | 
Comfortably Numb
by Mark Blake | 
The Beatles
by Bob Spitz | 
Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge
by Mark Yarm |
Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737) was a perfectionist whose single-minded pursuit of excellence changed the world of music. In the course of his long career in the northern Italian city of Cremona, he created more than a thousand stringed instruments; approximately six hundred survive, their quality unequalled by any subsequent violin-maker. In this fascinating book, Toby Faber traces the rich, multilayered stories of six of these peerless creations-five violins and a cello-and the one towering artist who brought them into being. Blending history, biography, meticulous detective work, and an abiding passion for music, Faber takes us from the salons of Vienna to the concert halls of New York, and from the breakthroughs of Beethoven's last quartets to the first phonographic recordings. This magnificent narrative invites us to share the life, the intrigue, and the incomparable beauty of the world's most marvelous stringed instruments.