Love for Sale: Pop Music in America is easy to devour for anyone who still feels a pang of nostalgia or despair when walking past a bank branch where a record store used to be. –The New York Times Book Review
One of our sharpest music critics. –
The Wall Street Journal No, this is not just a standard history of "Pop Music in America." This is a very personal and utterly wonderful book about the subject. –
Buffalo News Writing in graceful prose, Hajdu nicely balances brisk historical narrative, shrewd cultural analysis, and opinionated personal reflection in an absorbing account of shifting musical landscapes. –
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
A highly learned pleasure for music and pop-culture buffs. –
Kirkus Reviews This beautifully told history of popular music, like a great pop song, is full of memorable lines. –
Library Journal Pop music is often dismissed as light, frivolous and artistically bankrupt. But in his new book
Love for Sale, music critic David Hajdu argues that it's one of the most meaningful forms of expression in American culture. –
Time Magazine
A blend of history, criticism, and autobiography...it does touch on most major developments in how pop music has been produced and consumed in the United States from the 1890s through the present. –
Los Angeles Review of Books