The Books canon

Sourced and shelved.

Every book chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.

The History of Jazz

1997 · 608 pages

Gioia plays jazz piano and writes criticism, and both show in the single history worth owning, which runs from the New Orleans brass bands through bebop and Coltrane to what is played now.

★ 5.1

But Beautiful

1991 · 240 pages

Dyer imagines his way into the nights of jazz musicians, Lester Young after the army broke him and Thelonious Monk alone at a piano, inventing scenes to reach what no biography can.

★ 6.2