The 100 best nonfiction books: No 14 – Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom by Nik Cohn (1969)

Nik Cohn’s passionate account of how rock’n’roll changed the world captured the same wild energy as his subject matter

Pop, the cultural revolution of the late 20th century, has touched art, poetry, fiction, and everything musical, with its hot white wand. In the beginning, in the 1960s, pop was sex and drugs and rock’n’roll: a way of life. A lot of young journalists covered it, but very few transcended the genre to create a narrative that would outlive the generation that hoped it would die before it got old. Awopbop…, however, a luminously clear, aerial survey of an extraordinary phenomenon, set the gold standard that others would follow.

Related: Awopbopaloomopalopbombom! Sometimes the best lyrics mean nothing at all