***The Instant New York Times Bestseller!***

An intimate look at the life and music of modern pop's most legendary figure, Taylor Swift, from leading music journalist Rob Sheffield.

A cultural phenomenon. A worldwide obsession. An agent of emotional chaos. There's no parallel to Taylor Swift in history: a teenage girl who turns into the world's favorite pop star, songwriter, storyteller, guitar hero, live performer, changing how music is made and heard. An all-time great on the level of The Beatles, Prince, or David Bowie.

Heartbreak Is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music is the first book that goes deep on the musical and cultural impact of Taylor Swift. Nobody can tell the story like Rob Sheffield, the bestselling and award-winning author of Dreaming the Beatles, On Bowie, and Love Is a Mix Tape. The legendary Rolling Stone journalist is the writer who has chronicled Taylor for every step of her long career, from her early days to the Eras Tour. Sheffield gets right to the heart of Swift and her music, her lyrics, her fan connection, her raw power.

At once one of the most beloved music figures of the past two decades and one of the most criticized, Taylor Swift is known as much for her life beyond her music as she is for her hits--the most public of stars, yet also the weirdest and most mysterious. In the tradition of Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles, Heartbreak Is the National Anthem will inform and delight a legion of fans who hang on every word from Taylor and every word Rob writes on her.

The happiest, saddest, sweetest book about rock 'n' roll that I've ever experienced.--Chuck Klosterman

Mix tapes: We all have our favorites. Stick one into a deck, press play, and you're instantly transported to another time in your life. For Rob Sheffield, that time was one of miraculous love and unbearable grief. A time that spanned seven years, it started when he met the girl of his dreams, and ended when he watched her die in his arms. Using the listings of fifteen of his favorite mix tapes, Rob shows that the power of music to build a bridge between people is stronger than death. You'll read these words, perhaps surprisingly, with joy in your heart and a song in your head--the one that comes to mind when you think of the love of your life.

Praise for Love is a Mixtape

A memoir that manages, no small feat, to be funny and beautifully forlorn at the same time.--The New York Times Book Review

Humorous, heartbreaking, and heroic.--Entertainment Weekly

The finest lines ever written about rock 'n' roll . . . Like that song on the radio, every word of Rob's book is true. Love is a mix tape.--Rolling Stone

Many of us use pop culture as a mirror of our emotional lives, but Sheffield happily walks right through the looking glass.--Los Angeles Times

Sheffield writes with such aching remembering, you feel like you are invading his privacy . . . and it's the truth of those details that make this memoir so touching.--Newsweek

Once upon a time I was falling apart. Now I'm always falling in love.

When Rob Sheffield moved to New York City in 2001, he was a young widower trying to start a new life in a new town. One night, some friends dragged him to a karaoke bar--and that night turned into many nights in many karaoke bars. Karaoke became a way to be someone else if only for the span of a three-minute song, and through the sublime ridiculousness of karaoke, Rob began to find his voice.

And then the unexpected happened. A voice on the radio got Rob's attention. And the voice came attached to a woman who could name every constellation in the sky, every Depeche Mode B side, and could belt out a mean Bonnie Tyler. Turn Around Bright Eyes is a journey of hilarity and heartbreak with a karaoke soundtrack. It's about finding the courage to move on, clearing your throat, and letting it rip--and how songs get tangled up in our deepest emotions.

An NPR Best Book of the Year - Winner of the Virgil Thomson Award for Outstanding Music Criticism

This is the best book about the Beatles ever written --Mashable

Rob Sheffield, the Rolling Stone columnist and bestselling author of Love Is a Mix Tape offers an entertaining, unconventional look at the most popular band in history, the Beatles, exploring what they mean today and why they still matter so intensely to a generation that has never known a world without them.

Dreaming the Beatles is not another biography of the Beatles, or a song-by-song analysis of the best of John and Paul. It isn't another expos about how they broke up. It isn't a history of their gigs or their gear. It is a collection of essays telling the story of what this ubiquitous band means to a generation who grew up with the Beatles music on their parents' stereos and their faces on T-shirts. What do the Beatles mean today? Why are they more famous and beloved now than ever? And why do they still matter so much to us, nearly fifty years after they broke up?

As he did in his previous books, Love is a Mix Tape, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, and Turn Around Bright Eyes, Sheffield focuses on the emotional connections we make to music. This time, he focuses on the biggest pop culture phenomenon of all time--The Beatles. In his singular voice, he explores what the Beatles mean today, to fans who have learned to love them on their own terms and not just for the sake of nostalgia.

Dreaming the Beatles tells the story of how four lads from Liverpool became the world's biggest pop group, then broke up--but then somehow just kept getting bigger. At this point, their music doesn't belong to the past--it belongs to right now. This book is a celebration of that music, showing why the Beatles remain the world's favorite thing--and how they invented the future we're all living in today.

From the bestselling author of Love Is a Mix Tape and Turn Around Bright Eyes, a funny, insightful look at the sublime torture of adolescence.--Entertainment Weekly

The 1980s meant MTV and John Hughes movies, big dreams and bigger shoulder pads, and millions of teen girls who nursed crushes on the members of Duran Duran. As a solitary teenager stranded in the suburbs, Rob Sheffield had a lot to learn about women, love, music, and himself. And he was sure his radio had all the answers.

As evidenced by the bestselling sales of Sheffield's first book, Love Is a Mix Tape, the connection between music and memory strikes a chord with readers. Talking to Girls About Duran Duran strikes that chord all over again, and is a pitch-perfect trip through '80s music-from Bowie to Bobby Brown, from hair metal to hip-hop. But this book is not just about music. It's about growing up and how every song is a snapshot of a moment that you'll remember the rest of your life.

Shops, churches, pubs, social clubs, libraries, parks, schools, streets, windowsills, gardens, pavements... These public spaces can have an extraordinary effect on well-being in a community. They bring people together and form the bonds that lead to people supporting each other.

With vivid descriptions and heartfelt anecdotes, Pieces of Us is a moving tribute to the people who made up this distinct part of Wales. The author, Rob Sheffield, shares first-person accounts of how the area formed then lost the strong bonds that held the neighbourhood together. And he describes growing up here, leaving for university, and the effect of this on identity and family.

From this story of Greenhill arise implications for community development everywhere, including the importance of collaboration between local residents and government.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Love Is a Mix Tape, a thoughtful and loving meditation on the life of the late David Bowie that explores his creative legacy and the enduring and mutual connection he enjoyed with his fans

Innovative. Pioneering. Brave. Until his death in January 2016, David Bowie created art that not only pushed boundaries, but helped fans understand themselves and view the world from fantastic new perspectives.

When the shocking news of his death on January 10, 2016 broke, the outpouring of grief and adulation was immediate and ongoing. Fans around the world and across generations paid homage to this brilliant, innovate, ever evolving artist who both shaped and embodied our times.

In this concise and penetrating book, featuring color photographs, highly regarded Rolling Stone critic, bestselling author, and lifelong Bowie fan Rob Sheffield shares his own feelings about the passing of this icon and explains why Bowie's death has elicited such an unprecedented emotional outpouring from so many lives.

The book focuses on how leaders are learning to develop the creative capabilities of their team members and themselves. Through this learning, teams are developing original approaches to their work, benefitting their customers, patients, employees and other stakeholders.Using a strong interdisciplinary approach, How Leaders Learn to Boost Creativity in Teams introduces insights from the domains of psychology, creativity, leadership and power, and integrates these through a proposed framework for leading innovation. It contains nine in-depth, current-day cases of learning and workplace-based applications and has an optimistic message: creativity can be learnt. Making connections between current day research, learning and application in work contexts, it will appeal to leaders and students alike seeking to think outside of the box.