Is This It

“For Hyden, rock — like all music — isn’t just filler we might use as diversion during our commutes and workouts. It’s a lens for looking at our world and ourselves, and he wants to show you how to look through it … For the Strokes-pilled, Hyden’s book offers ample pleasures — including, of course, the pleasure of nostalgia. But I hope the book finds other readers, too. Not to convert them into Strokes fans but to show them what it’s like to have a rock friend … I know that, today, this is a service more often provided by online videos, especially when it comes to music. But something is lost: Nine times out of 10, the depth just isn’t as deep. Can the book-as-friend be saved? Maybe. Reading Is This It, I found myself hoping so.”—— New York Times

“. . . an intrepid, music-genre vivisection that nevertheless reinforces the truism that any work of art criticusm is as much about the critis as about the subjet. A graceful eulogy for rock bands, centered on rock's last best hope.”—— Kirkus Reviews

“[A] wry, heartbroken homage. . . . an insightful, entertaining meditation on rock ’n' roll might-have-beens.”—— Publishers Weekly

"An entertaining and often amusing defense of a band whose importance has always been easier to understand as a cultural phenomenon than as a straightforward commercial success." —–– Pop Matters

"Steven Hyden is a critic of bracing honesty, intelligence, wit, and charm, probably the closest modern successor to the great Lester Bangs. Indeed, Is This It isn't just a cultural history of the Strokes, but a love letter from a fan who bought the ticket, took the ride, and wonders what it all meant — and what it might still mean — for a true believer in the promise of rock 'n roll."—— Joe Hagan, author of Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine

 “Every band is a kind of proposition, and the Strokes are a particularly knotty one. Strong opinions and vexing contradictions come whizzing in from all sides. Steven Hyden, ever humble but always game, steps bravely into the crossfire, and emerges with an incisive, expansive, genial, playful, and heartfelt consideration of their curious career—and its broader implications, as the passing decades and inevitable upheavals change the way we think about rock bands, pop music, and the culture at large, from one generation to the next.” —— Nick Paumgarten, New Yorker staff writer and author of The Intangibles

“Steven Hyden is one of rock ‘n’ roll’s deepest, sharpest, brightest, and coolest thinkers, with a passionate superfan’s encyclopedic zeal but a humble Midwestern everyman’s clear-eyed and hard-fought wisdom. His undying love for the Strokes is infectious, but he’s both an ebullient rock-star mythologist and a shrewd realist: He’ll make you believe this band truly matters, but he also deftly drills down on how much they ultimately matter, and to exactly whom, and to what end. The Strokes might not have ‘saved rock,’ but enough warm and funny and passionate books like this might just save rock criticism.”—— Rob Harvilla, author and host of 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s

 "This is music criticism at its most engrossing. In his expert retelling of the Strokes' story, Steven Hyden not only finds deep comedy and sorrow, but explains the most profound shifts in the culture of music fandom that accompanied the decline of rock in the early 21st century."—— W. David Marx, author of Blank Space: A Cultural History of the 21st Century