About the Author

Alex Ross has been the music critic of The New Yorker since 1996. His first book, the international bestseller The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won a National Book Critics Circle Award. His second book, the essay collection Listen to This, received an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2008 and a Guggenheim Fellow in 2015.

Reviews

"The Rest Is Noise is a great achievement. Rilke once wrote of how he learned to stand 'more seeingly' in front of certain paintings. Ross enables us to listen more hearingly." --Geoff Dyer, The New York Times Book Review "[A] Brilliant, hugely enjoyable cultural history." --The Christian Science Monitor "Ross is a surpremely gifted writer who brings together the political and technological richness of the world inside the magic circle of the concert hall, so that each illuminates the other." --Lev Grossman, Time "It would be hard to imagine a better guide to the maelstrom of recent music than Mr. Ross, who worked on this book for a decade. He has an almost uncanny gift for putting music into words." --The Economist "The Rest Is Noise is a long and thrilling ride. . . . [Ross] writes about music in vivid language humming with intelligence. He tells great stories about musicians' lives and illuminates their work with the light of his own experiences." --Kevin Berger, Salon.com "The best book on what music is about--really about--that you or I will ever own." --Alan Rich, LA Weekly

"The Rest Is Noise is a great achievement. Rilke once wrote of how he learned to stand 'more seeingly' in front of certain paintings. Ross enables us to listen more hearingly." --Geoff Dyer, The New York Times Book Review "[A] Brilliant, hugely enjoyable cultural history." --The Christian Science Monitor "Ross is a surpremely gifted writer who brings together the political and technological richness of the world inside the magic circle of the concert hall, so that each illuminates the other." --Lev Grossman, Time "It would be hard to imagine a better guide to the maelstrom of recent music than Mr. Ross, who worked on this book for a decade. He has an almost uncanny gift for putting music into words." --The Economist "The Rest Is Noise is a long and thrilling ride. . . . [Ross] writes about music in vivid language humming with intelligence. He tells great stories about musicians' lives and illuminates their work with the light of his own experiences." --Kevin Berger, Salon.com "The best book on what music is about--really about--that you or I will ever own." --Alan Rich, LA Weekly

Modern music remains too modern for most people, but New Yorker critic Ross shows how influential it has actually been. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.