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Books for You
Scholarly books contain in-depth information and can cover a topic more thoroughly than articles.
See the tips for searching our catalog and the suggested book titles.
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Note for Distance Learners
If you are on a satellite campus or taking classes online, you have the same access to library resources as students on the Alva campus. That includes books in our print collection, which we can deliver by mail or courier. See the Interlibrary Loan page for details:
- Interlibrary Loan
The Interlibrary Loan Department can order books from other libraries or ship our books to other locations.
Suggested Books
The following is a selection from our catalog.
- All Shook Up: How Rock ’n’ Roll Changed America byCall Number: eBookISBN: 9780198031918Publication Date:
As Glenn Altschuler reveals in All Shook Up, the rise of rock ’n’ roll—and the outraged reception to it—in fact can tell us a lot about the values of the United States in the 1950s, a decade that saw a great struggle for the control of popular culture.
- Before Elvis: The Prehistory of Rock ’n’ Roll byCall Number: 781.640973 B5376bISBN: 9780810886384Publication Date:
An essential work for rock fans and scholars, Before Elvis: The Prehistory of Rock ’n’ Roll surveys the origins of rock ’n’ roll from the minstrel era to the emergence of Bill Haley and Elvis Presley. Unlike other histories of rock, Before Elvis offers a far broader and deeper analysis of the influences on rock music.
- The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs byCall Number: 782.4216609 M3342hISBN: 9780300187373Publication Date:
Unlike all previous versions of rock ’n’ roll history, this book omits almost every iconic performer and ignores the storied events and turning points that everyone knows. Instead, in a daring stroke, Greil Marcus selects ten songs recorded between and , and then proceeds to dramatize how each embodies rock ’n’ roll as a thing in itself, in the story it tells, inhabits, and acts out.
- How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll byCall Number: eBookISBN: 9780199712137Publication Date:
As its blasphemous title suggests, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll rejects the conventional pieties of mainstream jazz and rock history. Rather than concentrating on those traditionally favored styles, the book traces the evolution of popular music through developing tastes, trends and technologies—including the role of records, radio, jukeboxes and television—to give a fuller, more balanced account of the broad variety of music that captivated listeners over the course of the twentieth century.
- Rock and Roll: Its History and Stylistic Development byCall Number: 781.6609 St9497rISBN: 9780205246977Publication Date:
Rock and Roll: Its History and Stylistic Development gives a thorough historical and musical analysis of rock artists, styles, and events in a clear and accessible language.