The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century

`Alex Ross's incredibly nourishing book will rekindle anyone's fire for music.' Bjoerk

`A brilliant, bracing account of all the different kinds of classical music that have permeated this last dark century. Such an entertaining, accessible and enthralling book.' Colin Greenwood, Guardian

`It's a history of 20th-century music so vivid and original in approach that it made me listen again to many pieces I thought I knew well.' Philip Pullman, Guardian

`Ranks as my non-fiction book of the year. Erudite and engaging, written with flair and passion.' Boyd Tonkin, Independent

`Combines scrupulous and inventive analyses of the 20th century's music with lavish care over that music's improvised history.' Adam Thirlwell, Guardian

`Magisterial.' Telegraph

`He places the music in social and cultural context while sticking to the score and eschewing the artworld political consensus. A miracle.' George Walden, TLS

` The Rest is Noise achieves the aim with bravura, hacking out a path leading from cacophonous European modernism to the white noise of The Velvet Underground.' Ludovic Hunter-Tilroy, Financial Times

`Alex Ross breaks new ground. This is an astonishing book.' The Times

'Just occasionally someone writes a book you've waited your life to read. Alex Ross's enthralling history of 20th-century music is, for me, one of those books.' Alan Rusbridger, Guardian

`Stunning narrative. Visionary music critic Alex Ross comes closer than anyone to describing the spellbinding sensations music provokes.' Financial Times

`A work of immense scope and ambition ... a great achievement. Rilke once wrote of how he learned to stand more seeingly in front of certain paintings. Ross enables us to listen more hearingly.' New York Times

'A sound-drenched masterpiece.' Steven Poole, Guardian

Alex Ross has been the music critic of the `New Yorker' since 1996. From 1992 to 1996 he wrote for the `New York Times'. His first book, `The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century', published in 2007, was awarded the Guardian First Book Award and was shortlisted for the Pulitzer and Samuel Johnson prizes. In 2008 he became a MacArthur Fellow. A native of Washington, DC, he now lives in Manhattan.