From moving memoirs to fascinating essays, 2021 saw a wealth of riches for music-loving bookworms. Here are our critic’s ten favorites.

Robert K. Elder’s new book tells you everything you ever could possibly have wanted to know about Elvis Presley’s Christmas recordings, holiday traditions, and even the cards that ritually went out signed ‘Elvis and the Colonel.’

Musicians tend to disdain genre labels, but critics are fascinated by them - and Kelefa Sanneh is no exception.

'Renegades: Born in the U.S.A.' is a generously illustrated volume containing the transcripts of the conversations Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen shared in their podcast of the same name.

For just over a decade, punk bands were able to cash in on major labels’ thirst for relevant rock. Dan Ozzi’s new book chronicles the era from Green Day’s Dookie to Against Me!’s New Wave.

Nora Guthrie says that a new coffee table book she co-edited represents 'how he would have raised me’ if her father Woody Guthrie had lived.

In her new Aaliyah biography 'Baby Girl,' Kathy Iandoli helps set the record straight about the all-too-brief life of one of the shining stars of pop R&B.

In his new memoir, "Unrequited Infatuations," Stevie Van Zandt shares “the 10 percent I still remember” from his remarkable half-century career. It still runs to 403 pages.

Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, who wrote and originally performed the Halloween standard ‘I Put a Spell On You,’ was one of the most epic one-hit wonders in rock history - unless, that is, you count his next-best-known song, ‘Constipation Blues.’

2021 marks the 25th anniversary of Drive-By Truckers, and author Stephen Deusner takes a novel but apt approach to telling their story: he considers the band's history and discography through the lens of geography.