'Chess Records and the Business of Rock & Roll', Macher is a Yiddish word for a big wheel or an operator. On the South Side of Chicago in the late 1940s, two immigrants, one a Jew born in Russia, the other a black Blues singer from Mississippi, met and changed the course of musical history. Muddy Waters electrified the Blues, and Leonard Chess recorded it. Soon Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry added a dose of pulsating rhythm, and Chess Records captured that too. Rock & Roll had arrived, and an industry was born. In a book as vibrantly and exuberantly written as the music and people it portrays, Rich Cohen tells the engrossing story of how Chess, with the other record men, made this new sound into a multi-billion-dollar business, aggressively acquiring artists, strong-arming distributors, riding the crest of a wave that would crash over a whole generation. The book is full of absorbing lore and animated by a deep love for popular music - it's a big, tough, funny, clever story. Not politically correct, the book begins at a Bar Mitzvar and immediately draws connections between blacks and Jews. 220pp, photos.

"...a monumental survey... The Computer is a richly illustrated history of society's ever-evolving relationship with the silicon chip."-- "Wallpaper". "Almost pop art history of the technology". The story of the evolution of machines in computer history is full of the disruptive innovations that have led to today's world. From the early beginnings of computing to the bulky mainframe to the personal computer era, we now live in an almost entirely digital age. This visual tome explores steps from the first ideas of a calculating machine in the 19th century and early experiments with autonomous driving in the 1920s to oversized office computers in the 1950s to laptops and wearables of today. Tracing the stories of tech visionaries, pioneers, and entrepreneurs, the book combines compelling visuals, historical documents, and in-depth explanations to reveal significant events in computer history. Encompassing the invention of machines, coding, and software development, as well as technology's influence on today's political landscape, this incredible survey presents creations from Ada Lovelace, Charles Babbage, Alan Turing, Grace Hopper, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs. Showcasing forgotten gadgets and prototypes connecting iconic products such as the Apple Macintosh and the Sony Play Station as well as remembering milestones in software development, videogaming, and the web. Infographics explain wireless communication and other fundamental technical concepts, while the history of corporations such as IBM, Apple, Microsoft, Atari, Amazon, and Google is retraced through rare photographs and advertising campaigns. A fascinating read, this book acknowledges the computer's stupendous power and social impact. For techies and everyone interested in culture, economics, politics, and science. 24.6 x 37.2 cm, a weighty 3.89 kg, 472 pages. Text in English, Italian and Spanish.