Unlike all previous versions of rock n roll history, this book omits almost every iconic performer and ignores the storied events and turning points that everyone knows. Instead, in a daring stroke, Greil Marcus selects ten songs recorded between 1956 and 2008, then proceeds to dramatize how each embodies rock n roll as a thing in itself, in the story it tells, inhabits, and acts out - a new language, something new under the sun.