In the Context of No Content HEATHER HAVRILESKY: Emily Herbert’s Lady Gaga: Behind the Fame, Maureen Callahan’s Poker Face: The Rise and Rise of Lady Gaga, and Lizzy Goodman’s Lady Gaga: Critical Mass Fashion
Been A Long Time VICTOR LAVALLE: Stephen Davis’s LZ-’75: The Lost Chronicles of Led Zeppelin’s 1975 American Tour
The Titan JOSHUA KOSMAN: Norman Lebrecht’s Why Mahler? How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed Our World
Her Jazz JOHANNA FATEMAN: Sara Marcus’s Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution
Thy Song is Strong ERIC ORMSBY: John Bevis’s Aaaaw to Zzzzzd: The Words of Birds, North America, Britain, and Northern Europe and the British Library’s Secret Songs of Birds: The Hidden Beauty of Birdsong Revealed
Sound and Vision PETER TERZIAN: Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell’s For the Love of Vinyl: The Album Art of Hipgnosis, Johnny Morgan and Ben Wardle’s The Art of the LP: Classic Album Covers 1955–1995, Suzette Newman and Chris Salewicz’s The Story of Island Records: Keep on Running, and Spencer Drate and Judith Salavetz’s Five Hundred 45s: A Graphic History of the Seven-Inch Record
NATHAN LEE: Werner Spies’s David Lynch—Dark Splendor and Patrice Forest’s David Lynch—Lithos 2007–2009
J. C. GABEL: Steven Heller and Elaine Lustig Cohen’s Born Modern: The Life and Design of Alvin Lustig
BRIAN THOMAS GALLAGHER: Maryjean Wall’s How Kentucky Became Southern: A Tale of Outlaws, Horse Thieves, Gamblers, and Breeders
SUZY HANSEN: Stephen Kinzer's Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future and Scott Peterson's Let the Swords Encircle Me: Iran—A Journey Behind the Headlines
GEOFF NICHOLSON: Justin Spring's Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade and An Obscene Diary: The Visual World of Sam Steward