The Rest is Noise
by Alex Ross
It’s an account of 20th century classical music, which can be quite a hard sell, but Alex Ross entwines it with the social history of the century, because that really is how the music makes sense. He does it quite brilliantly: it’s instantly been hailed as a classic. No one else has done a book on the 20th century with such colour and brilliance; this is a total tour de force.
