NPR’s Book Concierge
Our Guide To 2016’s Great Reads
Produced by Nicole Cohen, Rose Friedman, Petra Mayer and Beth Novey | Executive Producer: Ellen Silva
Designed by David Eads, Juan Elosua and Clinton King
Please Kill Me: best book for non-fiction, history, music, and staff picks.
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History Of Punk
By Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
I have bought this book at least a dozen times, because every time I buy it, someone borrows it and it never returns home. It’s the best oral history there is, an uncensored tour of a downtown that exists today only as legend. “This is where CBGB’s used to be,” we say now with a shrug. “I remember when you wouldn’t dare walk on the Bowery!” Well, these are the real stories, kids, told by the people who were there, creating and destroying music, art and fashion at the nexus of what became New York punk. And they seem even fresher today, in this 20th anniversary edition, because it’s so rare now to hear famous people unfiltered.
