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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" - MashableRob 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 isnt another exposé about how they broke up. It isnt 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 worlds biggest pop group, then broke up - but then somehow just kept getting bigger. At this point, their music doesnt belong to the past - it belongs to right now. This book is a celebration of that music, showing why the Beatles remain the worlds favorite thing - and how they invented the future were all living in today.
About the Author
Rob Sheffield has been a music journalist for more than twenty years. He is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, where he writes about music, TV, and pop culture, and regularly appears on MTV and VH1. He is the author of the national bestseller Love is a Mix Tape, which has been translated into French, German, Swedish, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and other languages he cannot read. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
