Mark Ribowsky

In 1970 a scraggly, antiheroic young man from North Carolina by way of Massachusetts began  presenting a comforting new sound, a kind never heard before. Within a year, when young ears sought a new sound, there was "Fire and Rain" and "You've Got a Friend," and a new Southern California-fed branch of pop music. Taylor was its reluctant leader. Remarkably, Taylor has survived: his 2015 release, Before This World, edged out Taylor Swift and went to...

After he died in the backseat of a Cadillac at the age of twenty-nine, Hank Williams? A frail, flawed man who had become country music's first real star? Instantly morphed into its first tragic martyr. Having hit the heights with simple songs of despair, depression, and tainted love, he would, with that outlaw swagger, become in death a template for the rock generation to follow. Six decades later, Mark Ribowsky now weaves together the first fully...

Within the stoned soul picnic of Black music icons in the '60s and '70s, only one could bill himself without a blush as Moses, demanding liberation for Black men with his notions of life and self, Isaac Lee Hayes Jr...Hayes's stunning self-portraits, his obsessive pleas about love, sex, and guilt bathed in lush orchestral flights and soul-stirring bass lines, drove other soul men to libidinous license. While he thrived on soulful remakes of pop standards,...

Phil Spector created the "wall of sound," produced the Beatles' last record, persuaded the Ramones to go "pop," made the Righteous Brothers sound respectable, and was a millionaire by age 21. His credits include some of the most important and memorable songs of the 1960s: The Ronettes' "Be My Baby," The Crystals' "And Then He Kissed Me," and Ike and Tina Turner's "River Deep, Mountain High." Culled from more than 100 interviews with Spector's closest...

The first and only definitive biography of legendary Motown group, the Temptations. The Temptations are an incomparable soul group, with dozens of chart-topping hits such as My Girl and Papa Was a Rollin Stone. From the sharp suits, stylish choreography, and distinctive vocals that epitomized their onstage triumphs to the personal failings and psycho-dramas that played out behind the scenes, Ain't Too Proud to Beg tells the complete story of this...

Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1997, Don Shula remains the winningest coach of all time with 347 career victories and the only undefeated season in NFL history. But before he became the architect of the Dolphins dynasty, Shula was a hardworking kid selling fish on the banks of Lake Erie. As acclaimed sports biographer Mark Ribowsky shows, Shula met serious resistance at home when he asked to play high school football, but when his parents finally...