Stanley steers well clear of these classical pioneers (even those, such as Kurt Weill, who dipped a lot more than a toe into popular music), but does an inspired job of identifying and describing all the tangled roots of pre-rock popular music. He’s not pompous enough to put forward anything as scholarly as a thesis — but a sort of thesis emerges anyway. It’s that, for the first time in history, technology became the driving force behind music’s development.

... feels vastly broader in scope, by necessity encompassing everything from music hall to Muddy Waters. Because Stanley continues the stories of pre-rock’n’roll stars long after the rise of rock’n’roll a book that begins in Victorian London ends, more or less, in the present day: a huge timespan to cover, even in 600 pages.

... vying for the title of best music book of the year.

... the author manages to ruminate on 50-plus years of pop music. And that is quite an achievement, given that he presents reams of information in an engrossing way..

At one point, I wondered if Let’s Do It shouldn’t have been more like Will and Ariel Durant’s 11-volume The Story of Civilization with a stand-alone book on the Jazz Age, one on country music (which is treated in less than nine pages here) and so on. But Mr. Stanley chooses to show us the forest instead of the trees. The result is a study as crowded, hyper and engaging as many pop songs, the best of which evoke both youth and age, innocence and wisdom..

This author’s ability to assess the history of his subject through the lens of today’s music sets this book apart.