Chronicles the legendary band's rise to prominence and highlights the humor of each member.

An NPR Best Book of the Year • Winner of the Virgil Thomson Award for Outstanding Music Criticism “This is the best book about the Beatles ever written” —Mashable Rob Sheffield, the Rolling Stone columnist and bestselling author of Love Is a Mix Tape offers an entertaining, unconventional look at the most popular band in history, the Beatles, exploring what they mean today and why they still matter so intensely to a generation that has never known a world without them. Dreaming the Beatles is not another biography of the Beatles, or a song-by-song analysis of the best of John and Paul. It isn’t another exposé about how they broke up. It isn’t a history of their gigs or their gear. It is a collection of essays telling the story of what this ubiquitous band means to a generation who grew up with the Beatles music on their parents’ stereos and their faces on T-shirts. What do the Beatles mean today? Why are they more famous and beloved now than ever? And why do they still matter so much to us, nearly fifty years after they broke up? As he did in his previous books, Love is a Mix Tape, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, and Turn Around Bright Eyes, Sheffield focuses on the emotional connections we make to music. This time, he focuses on the biggest pop culture phenomenon of all time—The Beatles. In his singular voice, he explores what the Beatles mean today, to fans who have learned to love them on their own terms and not just for the sake of nostalgia. Dreaming the Beatles tells the story of how four lads from Liverpool became the world’s biggest pop group, then broke up—but then somehow just kept getting bigger. At this point, their music doesn’t belong to the past—it belongs to right now. This book is a celebration of that music, showing why the Beatles remain the world’s favorite thing—and how they invented the future we’re all living in today.

Discover the incredible life of Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet and the mastermind behind Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, in this fascinating picture book biography that’s perfect for fans of I Dissent. Most people know about President FDR, but do you know the woman who created his groundbreaking New Deal? As a young girl, Frances Perkins was very shy and quiet. But her grandmother encouraged Frances to always challenge herself. When somebody opens a door to you, go forward. And so she did. Frances realized she had to make her voice heard, even when speaking made her uncomfortable, and use it to fight injustice and build programs to protect people across the nation. So when newly-elected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt finally asked Frances to be the first female Secretary of Labor and help pull the nation out of the Great Depression, she knew she had to walk through that open door and forward into history. In this empowering, inspirational biography, discover how the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet led the charge to create the safety net that protects American workers and their families to this day.

This inspiring picture book tells the story of the friendship between Ringo, Paul, George, and John, and how their unique talents came together to make something brilliant. In 1957, a boy named Paul met a boy named John. John was funny and confident, while Paul was quiet and steady, but one thing they had in common was a love and talent for songwriting. When they were joined by George and Ringo, they formed the band whose name would soon be known across the world: The Beatles. Together, the Fab Four became the world’s best-loved band, drawing huge crowds to packed-out stadiums. But even they got nervous sometimes, and in those times they knew they could rely on each other. Through the power of friendship, The Beatles made their biggest dreams come true and still bring joy to the lives of millions. Friends Change the World is a series of picture books that celebrates the power of friendship. From musical greats to sports champions, scientists and explorers to artists and activists, these are the true stories of real friends who achieved amazing things. Whether best friends since school or thrown together by a chance encounter, they supported and inspired each other to make their shared dreams come true. This charming series shows 4- to 7-year-olds how togetherness, respect, and friendship can make the world a better place.

Paul McCartney and John Lennon described him as the Beatles' "favorite group," he won Grammy awards, wrote and recorded hit songs, and yet no figure in popular music is as much of a paradox, or as underrated, as Harry Nilsson. In this first ever full-length biography, Alyn Shipton traces Nilsson's life from his Brooklyn childhood to his Los Angeles adolescence and his gradual emergence as a uniquely talented singer-songwriter. With interviews from friends, family, and associates, and material drawn from an unfinished autobiography, Shipton probes beneath the enigma to discover the real Harry Nilsson. A major celebrity at a time when huge concerts and festivals were becoming the norm, Nilsson shunned live performance. His venue was the studio, his stage the dubbing booth, his greatest triumphs masterful examples of studio craft. He was a gifted composer of songs for a wide variety of performers, including the Ronettes, the Yardbirds, and the Monkees, yet Nilsson's own biggest hits were almost all written by other songwriters. He won two Grammy awards, in 1969 for "Everybody's Talkin'" (the theme song for Midnight Cowboy), and in 1972 for "Without You," had two top ten singles, numerous album successes, and wrote a number of songs--"Coconut" and "Jump into the Fire," to name just two--that still sound remarkably fresh and original today. He was once described by his producer Richard Perry as "the finest white male singer on the planet," but near the end of his life, Nilsson's career was marked by voice-damaging substance abuse and the infamous deaths of both Keith Moon and Mama Cass in his London flat. Drawing on exclusive access to Nilsson's papers, Alyn Shipton's biography offers readers an intimate portrait of a man who has seemed both famous and unknowable--until now.

From the rise of Bill Haley to the death of Jimi Hendrix, this account of music in the 1950s and 1960s is “the definitive history of rock ‘n’ roll” (Rolling Stone). This is British music journalist Nik Cohn’s classic and cogent history of an unruly era—filled with outrageous tales and vivid descriptions of the music, and covering artists from Elvis Presley to Eddie Cochran to Bob Dylan to the Beatles and beyond. From the father of what would become a new literary form—rock criticism—this is a seminal history of rock and roll’s evolution, including revisions and updates made for a new edition in the early 1970s.