Here are 100 books that Leader of the Band fans have personally recommended if you like
Leader of the Band.
Shepherd is a community of 10,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.
I’ve always had a longstanding interest in space, and particularly in aliens. In researching my breakthrough novel Not Alone, I extensively read as much nonfiction content on the topic as I could find, including governmental-backed scenario analyses of how things might actually play out in a contact or invasion scenario. Naturally, I have also read widely in the sci-fi genre for my own pleasure, with most of my interest in this specific topic.
I see this book as the greatest alien-related story of all time.
Carl Sagan’s humanity and philosophy make it so much more than a tale of alien contact. This is a human story about how alien contact would affect us and the world around us, from the personal to the political and on all levels from micro to macro.
The breadth of the story’s scope opened my mind in countless ways.
Astronomy teaches us that our bodies are quite literally star stuff, chemical elements made inside exploding stars. For much of my life, I studied and researched astronomy in universities, and in observatories on remote and beautiful mountain tops and in space. I explored the cosmos for its own sake, but I came to realise also that we are literally and metaphorically a part of the Universe, not apart from it. Just as the science of astronomy has done for me, these novels put humanity against the same backdrop: cosmic lives seen through women’s eyes.
Caroline Herschel was the sister of William Herschel, a church organist and piano tutor, latterly the discoverer of the planet Uranus, a mapper of the skies, and an astronomer at the court of King George III. At first, she devoted herself to her brother, acting as his housekeeper, musical accompanist, and PA in Bath and then as his scientific assistant in Slough, near Windsor Castle. She submerged her own volition to his. But gradually she found her own life in astronomy, and discovered 8 comets, pooh-poohed as small by the King but much appreciated by Queen Charlotte and her ladies. She became known internationally in her own right. She lived to a considerable old age in Hannover, where she was born. The book is a fictionalised but real-life story that echoes between the eighteenth century and our own time.
This is a story of love and astronomy; music and silence; secrets and truth-telling; of world-changing discoveries, and unrequited desire. Moving from York in the 1780s to Regency Bath, and then to Hanover in the 1840s, it concerns the lives of three people-all astronomers. There is Caroline, torn between her passion for music and her passion for the stars; John, deaf from childhood, whose extraordinary mathematical gifts afford him perspectives not available to others; and Edward, friend and mentor to Caroline and to John, who must conceal his innermost feelings from them both. All three find fulfilment in the heavens…
Astronomy teaches us that our bodies are quite literally star stuff, chemical elements made inside exploding stars. For much of my life, I studied and researched astronomy in universities, and in observatories on remote and beautiful mountain tops and in space. I explored the cosmos for its own sake, but I came to realise also that we are literally and metaphorically a part of the Universe, not apart from it. Just as the science of astronomy has done for me, these novels put humanity against the same backdrop: cosmic lives seen through women’s eyes.
Scottish astronomer and novelist Pippa Goldschmidt mixes astronomy and fiction in her novel. The book provides insight into the way that astronomy is carried out now in modern, remote, mountain-top observatories and in space (I can vouch for its verisimilitude). Jeanette is a young, lonely, junior researcher working in a university department dominated by male egos and incompetents. She puts academic politics and unsatisfactory affairs aside and travels to a mountain-top observatory in Chile for her research, making an unexpected discovery that throws her into conflict with her colleagues. Like her love life, her scientific life spirals out of her control: the Universe is ordered by science but her life and the lives of scientists are not.
A blackly comic campus satire combined with a heart-breaking family mystery, The Falling Sky brilliantly mixes fiction and astronomy into a fascinating, compelling, and moving narrative
Jeanette is a young, solitary post-doctoral researcher who has dedicated her life to studying astronomy. Struggling to compete in a prestigious university department dominated by egos and incompetents, and caught in a cycle of brief and unsatisfying affairs, she travels to a mountaintop observatory in Chile to focus on her research. There Jeanette stumbles upon evidence that will challenge the fundamentals of the universe, drawing her into conflict with her colleagues and the scientific…
Astronomy teaches us that our bodies are quite literally star stuff, chemical elements made inside exploding stars. For much of my life, I studied and researched astronomy in universities, and in observatories on remote and beautiful mountain tops and in space. I explored the cosmos for its own sake, but I came to realise also that we are literally and metaphorically a part of the Universe, not apart from it. Just as the science of astronomy has done for me, these novels put humanity against the same backdrop: cosmic lives seen through women’s eyes.
In this Wessex novel by Thomas Hardy, Lady Constantine’s explorer-husband has been missing for years when she offers patronage to the Byronic astronomer, Swithin St. Cleeve, letting him use a tower on her estate as an observatory. He shows her the stars through his telescope, passionately explaining what lies behind the astronomical images. Presuming her husband dead, she secretly marries St Cleeve, but a complicated legacy intrudes, and it transpires that her husband has been living with an African princess before blowing his head off. Suicide, bigamy, a lost legacy, an illegitimate child, the plot lines (there are many more than I have mentioned!) are resolved by numerous and dramatic deaths. This scandalous romance is melodramatically plotted, but gains a certain sublime power as an “emotional history of two infinitesimal lives against the stupendous background of the stellar universe".
TWO ON A TOWER (1882) is a tale of star-crossed love in which Hardy sets the emotional lives of his two lovers against the background of the stellar universe. The unhappily married Lady Constantine breaks all the rules of social decorum when she falls in love with Swithin St. Cleeve, an astronomer who is ten years her junior. Her husband's death leaves the lovers free to marry, but the discovery of a legacy forces them apart. This is Hardy's most complete treatment of the theme of love across the class and age divide and the fullest expression of his fascination…
I can’t imagine going through a day without listening to music. I remember buying my first Beatles album at eight years old. I saw Elvis on his last tour, Whitney Houston on her first, and Barbra Streisand on her comeback tour—twice. I remember listening to “Kind of Blue” the first time. I remember seeing Ella Fitzgerald late in her career at a club in Houston; her body was failing her—she had to sit in a chair to sing—but her voice was as beautiful as ever. Of all the artists I’ve admired over the years, the one whose work has consistently spoken to me most profoundly is Billie Holiday.
Throughout her career, Billie Holiday always gave credit for her unique singing style to Louis Armstrong, not just the way he played the trumpet, which clearly influenced her, but the vernacular approach he had to singing.
Armstrong’s musicality allowed him to enjoy a one-of-a-kind career in show business, which Ricky Riccardi lovingly captures in his book, at least the part covering the final years of Armstrong’s life. Riccardi is particularly good on “Hello Dolly!,” Armstrong’s swan song.
Prodigiously researched and richly detailed, this is a comprehensive account of the remarkable final twenty-five years of the life and art of one of America’s greatest and most beloved musical icons.
Much has been written about Louis Armstrong, but the majority of it focuses on the early and middle stages of his long career. Now, Ricky Riccardi—jazz scholar and musician—takes an in-depth look at the years in which Armstrong was often dismissed as a buffoonish, if popular, entertainer, and shows us instead the inventiveness and depth of expression that his music evinced during this time.
As a scholar as well as performer of the African American creative improvised music usually called jazz, my attunement to this art form resonates with its historico-cultural matrix as much as with the sounds themselves. These books distinguish themselves for being well-researched and rigorous. They are the real deal, doing justice to the heart as well as the intellect of this art form.
To me, due to the rigor of its scholarship, this is the best book written about Coltrane. It combines meticulous attention to Coltrane’s life story with in-depth musical analysis of his oeuvre. A must-read for anyone who wants to really delve into the music of this monumental musical master.
This is a definitive assessment of the life and work of jazz musician John Coltrane, based on new interviews with his colleagues and never-before-published material. John Coltrane was a key figure in jazz, a pioneer in world music, and an intensely emotional force whose following continues to grow. This new biography, the first by a professional jazz scholar and performer, presents a huge amount of never-before-published material, including interviews with Coltrane, photos, genealogical documents, and innovative musical analysis that offers a fresh view of Coltrane's genius. Compiled from scratch with the assistance of dozens of Coltrane's colleagues, friends, and family,…
I've mostly made my living as a feature writer, covering a broad range of subjects—from 9/11 to the Poker Million tournament, Miles Davis to (a film version of) James Joyce’s Ulysses, British soldiers injured in Afghanistan to the Peace One Day campaign—for numerous UK and Irish newspapers and magazines, including GQ, where I was formerly deputy editor, and Esquire, where I was editor-at-large. I've also written extensively about music, jazz in particular; musicians I've interviewed include Nick Cave, Gil Scott-Heron, McCoy Tyner, Wynton Marsalis, and Maria Schneider. My first book, a biography of the American guitarist Bill Frisell, was published by Faber in the spring of 2022.
Another work that is wonderfully and winningly hard to pin down, Coming Through Slaughter is an imaginative and fragmentary collage of monologue, memoir, interviews, lyrics, photographs, archival material, hospital files—and white space—that builds a novelistic portrait of the mythical dark life and hard times of cornet player Buddy Bolden, one of the originators of jazz in New Orleans at the turn of the twentieth century. From the little that is known about Bolden and his music, Ondaatje shapes an audacious story that is short, cinematic, dream-like, and devastating, a book that incontrovertibly proved once again to me that there are many, many ways to tell the story of a life.
Discover Michael Ondaatje's debut novel, 'a beautifully detailed story, perhaps the finest jazz novel ever written' Sunday Times
Based on the life of cornet player Buddy Bolden, one of the legendary jazz pioneers of turn-of-the-twentieth-century New Orleans, Coming Through Slaughter is an extraordinary recreation of a remarkable musical life and a tragic conclusion. Through a collage of memoirs, interviews, imaginary conversations and monologues, Ondaatje builds a picture of a man who would work by day at a barber shop and by night unleash his talent to wild audiences who had never experienced such playing. But Buddy was also playing the…
As a scholar as well as performer of the African American creative improvised music usually called jazz, my attunement to this art form resonates with its historico-cultural matrix as much as with the sounds themselves. These books distinguish themselves for being well-researched and rigorous. They are the real deal, doing justice to the heart as well as the intellect of this art form.
This scrupulous 624-page tome elucidates the life and work of the High Priest of Bebop, Saint Thelonious Monk, in amazing detail and exactitude, while remaining supremely engaging and easy to read. The fact that the author developed the book with members of Monk’s family comes through in the authenticity of the narrative.
The image of Thelonious Sphere Monk (1917-1982), with his trademark goatee, dark glasses, and hat, is today a poster-image of coolness just as Che Guevara's face once was an image of rebellion. Jazz fans revere Monk for his ground-breaking compositions and piano playing from the 1950s and 1960s, but to a wider audience he stands for something much bigger: the very idea of native genius; a quirky, absent-minded, unalloyed originality that is the perfect symbol of the indefinable essence of jazz. Monk's creations from the 1950s and 1960s rank among jazz's most beloved classics, yet Kelley shows that the life…
I can’t imagine going through a day without listening to music. I remember buying my first Beatles album at eight years old. I saw Elvis on his last tour, Whitney Houston on her first, and Barbra Streisand on her comeback tour—twice. I remember listening to “Kind of Blue” the first time. I remember seeing Ella Fitzgerald late in her career at a club in Houston; her body was failing her—she had to sit in a chair to sing—but her voice was as beautiful as ever. Of all the artists I’ve admired over the years, the one whose work has consistently spoken to me most profoundly is Billie Holiday.
One of the treasures of American show business is Hazel Scott. A child prodigy on piano who attended Julliard, a headliner at Café Society thanks to Billie Holiday’s mentorship, and eventually the wife of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., she was the first African American to host her own television show, “The Hazel Scott Show,” in 1950.
A confrontation with the House Un-American Activities Committee prompted the cancellation of her network show, which led her to go into a kind of exile in Paris where she set up a salon that saw as guests everyone from Lester Young to the Beatles.
Karen Chilton vividly documents the life and times of the singer in this book. I love the book because it captures the artistry of a true original. In the future, more attention should be paid to Hazel Scott, who has become show business history’s forgotten genius.
Hazel Scott was an important figure in the later part of the Black renaissance onward. Even in an era where there was limited mainstream recognition of Black Stars, Hazel Scott's talent stood out and she is still fondly remembered by a large segment of the community. I am pleased to see her legend honored. ---Melvin Van Peebles, filmmaker and director""This book is really, really important. It comprises a lot of history---of culture, race, gender, and America. In many ways, Hazel's story is the story of the twentieth century."" ---Murray Horwitz, NPR commentator and coauthor ofAin't Misbehavin'""Karen Chilton has deftly woven…
I grew up hearing jazz thanks to my dad, a big swing fan who allegedly played Duke Ellington for me in the crib. My father couldn’t believe it when I developed a taste for “modern jazz,” bebop, even Coltrane, but he never threw me out. Fifty years later I still love to play jazz on drums and listen to as much as I can. But along the way, I realized the world might be better served by me writing about the music than trying to make a living performing it. I had the great privilege of studying jazz in graduate school and wrote about big-band jazz for my first book, which helped launch my career.
Space Is the Place opened so many windows for me into a world of esoteric spirituality fused with mind-blowing musical and theatrical creativity. John Szwed was a member of my PhD dissertation committee, although it was pretty hard to track him down, and he was wrapping up this book as I finished my own. I’d seen Sun Ra at my college and thought of the Arkestra as a kind of spaced-out novelty act, not knowing anything about Ra’s history: his celestial epiphanies; his long immersion in big-band jazz, including his stint with the great Fletcher Henderson; the cadre of stellar musicians he recruited and molded for the Arkestra; his entrepreneurial streak. When I turned to the study of music and spirituality, Szwed’s biography became an indispensable source. Afrofuturism has become a very hot topic in contemporary cultural studies, and there’s no better way into its arcane mysteries than through this…
Considered by many to be a founder of Afrofuturism, Sun Ra-aka Herman Blount-was a composer, keyboardist, bandleader, philosopher, entrepreneur, poet, and self-proclaimed extraterrestrial from Saturn. He recorded over 200 albums with his Arkestra, which, dressed in Egypto-space costumes, played everything from boogie-woogie and swing to fusion and free jazz. John Szwed's Space is the Place is the definitive biography of this musical polymath, who was one of the twentieth century's greatest avant-garde artists and intellectuals. Charting the whole of Sun Ra's life and career, Szwed outlines how after years in Chicago as a blues and swing band pianist, Sun Ra…
Interested in
jazz musicians,
France,
and
astronomers?
10,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them.
Browse their picks for the best books about
jazz musicians,
France,
and
astronomers.
