Bruce Springsteen’s telecaster, Slash’s Les Paul, Kurt Cobain’s stratocaster, Angus Young’s SG… These were the guitars that exemplified rock music for me when I was younger. The story of rock goes hand-in-hand with these two guitar manufacturers, while there are other heavy-hitters in the industry, none have the same cache as these two. (Gibson is my personal favourite.) In January 2019, Scribner are due to publish The Birth of Loud, Ian S. Port‘s history of the two men who created these brands. I’m really looking forward to reading this. Here’s the synopsis:
A riveting saga in the history of rock ‘n’ roll: the decades-long rivalry between the two men who innovated the electric guitar’s amplified sound — Leo Fender and Les Paul — and their intense competition to convince rock stars like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton to play the instruments they built.
In the years after World War II, music was evolving from big-band jazz into the primordial elements of rock ’n’ roll — and these louder styles demanded revolutionary instruments. When Leo Fender’s tiny firm marketed the first solid-body electric guitar, the Esquire, musicians immediately saw its appeal. Not to be out-maneuvered, Gibson, the largest guitar manufacturer, raced to build a competitive product. The company designed an “axe” that would make Fender’s Esquire look cheap and convinced Les Paul — whose endorsement Leo Fender had sought — to put his name on it. Thus was born the guitar world’s most heated rivalry: Gibson versus Fender, Les versus Leo.
While Fender was a quiet, half-blind, self-taught radio repairman from rural Orange County, Paul was a brilliant but egomaniacal pop star and guitarist who spent years toying with new musical technologies. Their contest turned into an arms race as the most inventive musicians of the 1950s and 1960s — including bluesman Muddy Waters, rocker Buddy Holly, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Eric Clapton — adopted one maker’s guitar or another. By the time Jimi Hendrix played “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock in 1969 on his Fender Stratocaster, it was clear that electric instruments — Fender or Gibson — had launched music into a radical new age, empowering artists with a vibrancy and volume never before attainable.
Back in June 2018, the Washington Post published a story about “The death of the electric guitar”, which I would also highly recommend.
The Birth of Loud will be published by Scribner in the US, Canada and in the UK.
This December, 
As the author of Team of Rivals and other fantastic history books, Doris Kearns Goodwin needs little introduction. This year, Goodwin’s latest book will be published by Simon & Schuster: Leadership in Turbulent Times. The title is pretty self-explanatory, and the book draws from the presidencies of four men she is most familiar with: Abraham Lincoln (
This November, Jack West Jr. returns! The Three Secret Cities is Matthew Reilly’s fifth novel featuring the soldier-turned-adventurer. I’ve enjoyed all of the novels in the series (as well as Reilly’s loosely-connected Scarecrow series), and so I am very much looking forward to this latest thriller. Here’s the synopsis:
Today, Kyle Mills 
An interesting, if flawed espionage thriller
A little while ago, 
The novel is published in North America by 
Let’s start with an introduction: Who is Tyrell Johnson?
Civilian Reader 