33 Revolutions per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day - Softcover

"Lynskey has a strong command of the music and its makers."--Wall Street Journal

"[A] provocative, absorbing book"--Cleveland Plain Dealer

"A longtime music critic, Lynskey presents up-close details to ballast the book's larger historical sweep."--Los Angeles Times

"lovely writing...Let's praise the agile, many-tentacled writer Mr. Lynskey can often be, because I loved bits of this book; you can pluck out the many tasty things like seeds from a pomegranate."--New York Times

"A must-read for militant-music lovers."--The Root

"This book is impressive in scope."--New Yorker

"British music critic Dorian Lynskey offers a completely absorbing look at 33 songs, spanning seven decades and haling from five continents...Comprehensive and beautifully written."--Booklist (starred review)

From one of the most prominent music critics writing today, a page-turning and wonderfully researched history of protest music in the twentieth century and beyond

Nowhere does pop music collide more dramatically with the wider world than in the protest song, which forces its way into the news and prompts conversations from Washington to Westminster. Rather than being merely a worthy adjunct to the business of pop, protest music is woven into its DNA. When you listen to Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Public Enemy, or the Clash, you are not sitting down to a dusty seminar; you are hearing pop music at its most thrillingly alive. 

33 Revolutions Per Minute is the story of protest music told in 33 songs. An incisive history of a wide and shape-shifting genre, Dorian Lynskey's authoritative book takes us from the days of Billie Holliday crooning “Strange Fruit” before shocked audiences to Vietnam-era crowds voicing their resentment at the sounds of Bob Dylan to the fracas over the Dixie Chicks’ comments against George W. Bush during the Iraq War.

For anyone who enjoyed Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise, Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, or Simon Reynolds’ Rip It Up and Start Again, 33 Revolutions Per Minute is an absorbing and moving portrait of a century when music was the people’s truest voice.