Chicago

Listen, let's get one thing straight. This isn't your grandfather's dry, dusty blues history book. You've probably seen those before-the ones with sepia-toned photos and solemn tales of hardship. And while the blues certainly sprang from hardship, the story of its journey to Chicago and its electric rebirth is anything but solemn. It's a tale packed with bigger-than-life characters, bizarre backstories, and more than a few laughs.This is a book about the blues as a loud, messy, and hilarious family reunion. It's about how a bunch of country boys from the Mississippi Delta plugged their guitars into amplifiers, cranked the volume to eleven, and accidentally invented a sound that would change music forever.You'll meet Muddy Waters, a man so cool he could make a funeral look like a party, and his great rival, Howlin' Wolf, a man whose roar could curdle milk from three blocks away. We'll pull back the curtain on the smoky, claustrophobic juke joints where these legends honed their craft and traded insults. We'll even travel across the Atlantic to see how the English, in their own peculiar way, gave the blues a second life.