To the Western eye, no contemporary city matches the exuberance and strangeness of Tokyo’s street culture: Lolitas in ruffled pinafores, club kids with painted faces and platform boots, art students with asymmetrical haircuts and black tulle skirts and leather jackets.  The Tokyo Look Book, by British anthropologist Philomena Keet, is an indispensable guide for Westerners interested in Tokyo’s vibrant street fashions. Photographer Yuri Manabe’s photographs capture the city’s most stylish—and outrageous—denizens, while Keet guides us through Tokyo’s various subcultures and introduces us to some of the city’s most influential designers, tastemakers, and boutiques.  Stylish and spectacular, indeed.

—Raquel Laneri

Conservatively, hundreds of books have been written about the Beatles. In addition to the plethora of autobiographies and biographies, these include children’s books, at least two separate volumes on the late ‘60s “Paul is Dead” hoax, and titles like Earn Extra Money In Your Spare Time Selling Beatles Memorabilia Online. Yet, if necessary, the truly universally essential titles could be grouped into a Nick Hornby-type Top Five, and the late Ian MacDonald’s Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties, originally published in 1994, would be among them. Why? In short, it’s MacDonald’s ingenious tact of cataloging each of the 188 songs the Fab Four ever released, along with a handful they didn’t, in order of the original date of recording, and writing an individual analysis of each. This setup plays on what Beatles observers love or loathe most about the band—the music, stupid!—and uses it as a springboard for analyzing everything else about the band, including influences on and of, personalities, cultural contexts, relationships, and philosophical musings, rather than vice versa.

—John Bergstrom

Did you know that a mere seven prisoners were freed when the Bastille was stormed in 1789?  The glorious illustrations had you thinking hundreds, didn’t they?  Did you know it was not Marie Antoinette who said “Let them eat cake”? And Hitler was not a vegetarian?  Did you know that World War II did not end until 1990?  For the know-it-all with solid faith in her education, be it from school text book or the common wisdom captured in a Hollywood film, this is a fun book that will rock her world.  Peppered with words of wisdom from those whom we assume know better than the rest (e.g., “Light travels faster than sound—isn’t that why some people appear bright until you hear them speak?”—Steven Wright), this is an eclectic collection of conceptions about our world proven wrong, and then righted. Or so they say.

—Karen Zarker

You like beer? Who doesn’t like beer? But do you know beer? Are you aware of its origins in this country, of the immigrant brewers who took a gamble and made a fortune on the golden ale, helping to pave the American frontier in the process? Ambitious Brew, Maureen Ogle’s history of beer in the United States, only begins there. In a brisk prose that will keep even the non-bibliophile hooked, she pours forth with tales of saloons and Prohibition, anti-drunk driving campaigns, right up through today’s mega-brewers. It’s 342 thorough pages, but it reads quick, and goes down like a smooth draught.

—Bradford Pilcher

The earliest issues of beat diggers’ bible Wax Poetics are nearly as coveted as the vinyl records the magazine’s writers obsess over. The magazine isn’t just about samples used in hip-hop, though. It pays reverent homage to the musicians behind the sounds, whether legends or humble session musicians. The shiny new hardcover tome Wax Poetics Anthology, Vol. 1 collects articles from the first five issues of the magazine. It gives subscribers and newcomers another chance to read smart interviews and features that look through the lens of hip-hop at the diverse world of music that stands as its foundation.

—Dave Heaton

The companion volume to the highest-rated show on the Travel Channel, celebrity chef and professional wiseass Bourdain crisscrosses the globe, showing us places both exotic (Hong Kong, Malaysia, Namibia) and not so much (Cleveland, South Carolina, Las Vegas) primarily through the food unique to their cultures. Unlike most food-travel personalities, however, Bourdain eschews high-end restaurants and remains on ground level, eating what the people eat at bistros, pubs, street carts, and in the wild, narrating his adventures with his trademark sardonic wit. More diary than travelogue, Bourdain’s book is a more congenial companion than either Frommer’s or Zagat’s, and the jokes are better, too.

—John Nettles