\n\tAll products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tBooks always make great gifts<\/a> \u2013 and music books<\/a> are especially good, since it\u2019s easier to guess someone\u2019s taste in music than in novels. <\/p>\n \n\tThe past few years have been a booming time for rock books, including biographies and autobiographies, and some great titles came out in 2025, from memoirs by Patti Smith<\/a> and Robbie Robertson<\/a>, to biographies (Talking Heads<\/a>) and oral histories (Wings<\/a>). They all go nicely with the music that inspired them.<\/p>\n \n\tCheck out our favorite music books worthy of a placement underneath the Christmas tree.<\/p>\n \n\tBy Peter Ames Carlin<\/p>\n \n\tSome rock icons loom so large that books about them are getting smaller \u2013 first a book about Bruce Springsteen\u2019s Nebraska<\/em> (which was adapted into Deliver Me from Nowhere<\/em>), now one about Born to Run<\/em>. Fans know the basic arc: Careerwise, Springsteen had one last chance to make it real, so he labored over the album that became his early-career triumph. Tonight in Jungleland<\/em> fleshes out that story with reported details about the songs and sessions. It\u2019s not only about how Springsteen made this album; it\u2019s about how Springsteen became Springsteen.<\/p>\n \n \n \t\t\t\tBuy Now On Amazon<\/span>\t<\/a><\/div>\n \n \n\tBy Jonathen Gould<\/p>\n \n\tThe Talking Heads deserve an ambitious biography and this is it. Gould, the author of books about the Beatles and Otis Redding, shows how the band formed in a Downtown Manhattan scene where punks mingled with visual artists, then recorded significant hits without losing its edge \u2013 and redefined the visual and cinematic possibilities of pop. The Talking Heads weren\u2019t the only band that graduated from that scene to bigger things, but they did more than any other to bring an avant-garde sensibility to mainstream music.<\/p>\n \n \n \t\t\t\tBuy Now On Amazon<\/span>\t<\/a><\/div>\n \n \n\tBy Peter Guralnick<\/p>\n \n\tThis isn\u2019t the most essential book about Elvis Presley \u2013 Guralnick\u2019s justly acclaimed two-volume biography takes that crown \u2013 but it\u2019s by the best writer about him. After devoting a book to Sun Records founder Sam Phillips, Guralnick turns his eye to the King\u2019s manager and the relationship between him and his star, which was by turns triumphant and tragic. Guralnick was given access to Parker\u2019s letters and papers, some of which are reprinted in the second half of the book. This story, like almost everything about Presley, is more complicated than many people realize. But like Presley, Parker has his own great story \u2013 about rock, about art and about America itself.<\/p>\n \n \n \t\t\t\tBuy Now On Amazon<\/span>\t<\/a><\/div>\n \n \n\tBy Robert Hilburn<\/p>\n \n\tThis book came out in late 2024, but I\u2019m cheating to include it \u2013 this is the first serious biography of Newman, and it\u2019s a great treat. Robert Hilburn has written acclaimed biographies of Johnny Cash and Paul Simon, and he brings the same rigor to Newman\u2019s life, even though less of it was lived in public. It\u2019s all here: His family\u2019s work in film scoring, his early career as a professional songwriter, the making of classic albums like Sail Away <\/em>and Good Old Boys <\/em>and his return to prominence with satirical songs like the one that gave the book its title.<\/p>\n \n \n \t\t\t\tBuy Now On Amazon<\/span>\t<\/a><\/div>\n \n \n\tBy Paul McCartney; edited by Ted Widmer<\/p>\n \n\tWhat do you do for an encore after the Beatles? For Paul McCartney, the answer was, form another band (after releasing an album under his own name and one as Paul and Linda McCartney). This oral history tells that story \u2013 how Wings played unannounced shows at universities and sold-out stadiums, how McCartney tried to revive the camaraderie that defined the Beatles and how band members got mugged in Lagos, Nigeria, where they had gone to record Band on the Run<\/em>. The band never fully escaped the shadow of the Beatles \u2013 a tall order \u2013 but Wings made seven studio albums, including two stone-cold classics, and their story is great fun to revisit.<\/p>\n \n \n \t\t\t\tBuy Now On Amazon<\/span>\t<\/a><\/div>\n \n \n\tBy Tom Piazza<\/p>\n \n\tThe novelist and essayist Tom Piazza wrote a profile of singer-songwriter John Prine in 2018, then started working with the artist on his memoir. It wasn\u2019t finished when Prine died in 2020, of complications of COVID, so Piazza turned it into a book about the years they knew each other \u2013 about Prine\u2019s poignant songwriting, his hilarious storytelling and his career on the edge of the music business, an artist who stayed independent for much of his career while writing hits for better-known singers. There\u2019s more to Prine than this, but this is a great place to start.<\/p>\n \n \n \t\t\t\tBuy Now On Amazon<\/span>\t<\/a><\/div>\n \n \n\tBy Robbie Robertson<\/p>\n \n\tAside from his other achievements as a guitarist for the Band and a solo artist, Robbie Robertson also wrote one of the best-ever rock memoirs, the 2016 book Testimony<\/em>. Billboard<\/em> called it \u2013 in an article<\/a> I wrote \u2013 \u201cone long, grand adventure through rock\u2019s golden age, as told by a world-class raconteur.\u201d Robertson, who died in 2023, went on to score the Martin Scorsese movie Killers of the Flower Moon<\/em>, which is dedicated to him, and write Insomnia<\/em>, a second memoir focused on the time he spent as odd-couple roommates with Scorsese, as well as his musical work on the director\u2019s films. This was the late \u201970s, so some of the insomnia may have been chemically induced, but Robertson\u2019s ability to remember and recount a good story \u2013 and to give it a mythic dimension \u2014 is undiminished.<\/p>\n \n \n \t\t\t\tBuy Now On Amazon<\/span>\t<\/a><\/div>\n \n \n\tBy Mark Ronson<\/p>\n \n\tOh, the \u201890s \u2013 back when CDs were expensive and concerts were cheap and media companies had launch parties instead of wakes. Mark Ronson was there, especially at the parties, which brought together different social worlds to the sound of hip-hop and the music that grew out of it. For someone who was very much at the center of this social whirl, he brings an enthusiasm and a genuine love for music to his story of growing up with, in and for music. There was a time when there was an underground \u2013 when not everything was instantly accessible online \u2013 and it mattered.<\/p>\n \n \n \t\t\t\tBuy Now On Amazon<\/span>\t<\/a><\/div>\n \n \n\tBy Ron Rosenbaum<\/p>\n \n\tFew journalists have spent more time, over more years, thinking about Bob Dylan than Ron Rosenbaum, a leading literary journalist who has also written books about how we grapple with both evil (Explaining Hitler<\/em>) and enlightenment (The Shakespeare Wars<\/em>). Some of Rosenbaum\u2019s thinking comes from a 1977 interview with Dylan, one of the most detailed the artist ever gave. Some of it has roots in the sheer breadth of Rosenbaum\u2019s knowledge, which ranges from the origins of computer hacking (really!) to disputes over Shakespeare scholarship. Dylan presents questions that may not have answers, but it is a joy to read Rosenbaum think them through.<\/p>\n \n \n \t\t\t\tBuy Now On Amazon<\/span>\t<\/a><\/div>\n \n \n\tBy Patti Smith<\/p>\n \n\tOver the last decade and a half, Patti Smith has gone from underappreciated rock artist to properly appreciated memoirist \u2013 first with Just Kids<\/em>, then with M Train<\/em> and Year of the Monkey<\/em>. (She has also written other books and collections of lyrics and poetry.) This fall marks the 50th anniversary of her epic breakthrough, Horses<\/em><\/a> \u2013 just reissued with some extra tracks, takes and demos \u2013 and her new book, Bread of Angels<\/em>, focuses on her younger years and her family life as an adult in Michigan. It has less New York grit than Just Kids<\/em> \u2013 but it has the same bold, lyrical writing.<\/p>\n \n \n \t\t\t\t\n\t\tTonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run\t<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\n\n\t\tTonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run\t<\/h2>\n
$30.00<\/s><\/span>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t50% off<\/i><\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n\n\t\tBurning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock\t<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\n\n\t\tBurning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock\t<\/h2>\n
$35.00<\/s><\/span>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t47% off<\/i><\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n\n\t\tThe Colonel and the King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley, and the Partnership that Rocked the World\t<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\n\n\t\tThe Colonel and the King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley, and the Partnership that Rocked the World\t<\/h2>\n
$38.00<\/s><\/span>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t25% off<\/i><\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n\n\t\tA Few Words in Defense of Our Country: The Biography of Randy Newman\t<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\n\n\t\tA Few Words in Defense of Our Country: The Biography of Randy Newman\t<\/h2>\n
$34.00<\/s><\/span>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t51% off<\/i><\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n\n\t\tWings: The Story of a Band on the Run\t<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\n\n\t\tWings: The Story of a Band on the Run\t<\/h2>\n
$45.00<\/s><\/span>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t21% off<\/i><\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n\n\t\tLiving in the Present with John Prine\t<\/h3>\n
![\"10](\"https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/living-in-the-present-book.jpg?w=942&h=623&crop=1\")
<\/p>\n\n\t\tLiving in the Present with John Prine\t<\/h2>\n
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\n<\/div>\n\n\t\tInsomnia\t<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\n\n\t\tInsomnia\t<\/h2>\n
$32.00<\/s><\/span>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t25% off<\/i><\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n\n\t\tNight People: How to Be a DJ in \u201890s New York City\t<\/h3>\n
![\"10](\"https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/night-people-book.jpg?w=942&h=623&crop=1\")
<\/p>\n\n\t\tNight People: How to Be a DJ in ’90s New York City\t<\/h2>\n
$29.00<\/s><\/span>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t14% off<\/i><\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n\n\t\tBob Dylan: Things Have Changed\t<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\n\n\t\tBob Dylan: Things Have Changed\t<\/h2>\n
$32.00<\/s><\/span>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t22% off<\/i><\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n\n\t\tBread of Angels: A Memoir\t<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\n\n\t\tBread of Angels: A Memoir\t<\/h2>\n
$30.00<\/s><\/span>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t10% off<\/i><\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n