Eric Weisbard's 'Songbooks' -"one of the best books about music I’ve ever read"

"An inspiring, provocative vision of the many ways popular music matters- how caring writers have addressed its meanings, pleasures, mysteries, racism, sexism, populism, democratic vistas, conflicts of interest, angles of entry, leaps of faith, tricks of fate, joking around, stormy Mondays, mother fuyers, weary blues from waiting, reasons to be cheerful, simple twists of fate, sexy bits, and did I mention racism?" - Robert Christgau writes about new book 'Songbooks: The Literature of American Popular Music' by (one of his best friends) Eric Weisbard. There are two narrative lines in the book - "the shifting dialectic of vernacular and sentimental and the flowering and wilting of music journalism as a profession".