Retromania (Faber & Faber)

The first book to make sense of 21st Century pop, "Retromania" explores rock's nostalgia industry of revivals, reissues, reunions and remakes, and argues that there has never before been a culture so obsessed with its own immediate past. Pulling together parallel threads from music, fashion, art, and new media, Simon Reynolds confronts a central paradox of our era: from iPods to YouTube, we're empowered by mind-blowing technology, but too often it's used as a time machine or as a tool to shuffle and rearrange music from yesterday. We live in the digital future but we're mesmerized aby our analogue past.