"Playing to the Crowd explores and explains how the rise of digital communication platforms has transformed artist-fan relationships into something more intimate. Through in-depth interviews with musicians such as the Cure, UB40, and Throwing Muses, Nancy K. Baym reveals how new media has facilitated connections through the active participation of both the artists and their devoted digital fan base. Before the rise of online sharing and user-generated...

"Where does learning begin and how is it sustained and stored in the brain? For musicians, these questions are at the very core of their creative lives. Cognitive and neuroscience have flung wide the doors of our understanding, but bridging the gap between research data and music-making requires a unique immersion in both worlds. Lynn Helding presents a symphony of discoveries that illuminate how musicians can optimize their mental wellbeing and cognitive...

Suggests techniques for overcoming self-consciousness and improving musical performances, shares a variety of exercises, and includes advice on improving one's listening skills.

Our society is obsessed with achievement. Young people are pushed toward the next test or the "best" grammar school, high school, or college they can get into. Adults push themselves toward the highest-paying, most prestigious jobs, seeking promotions and public recognition. As Adam Gopnik points out, the result is not so much a rat race as a rat maze, with no way out. Except one: to choose accomplishment over achievement. Achievement, Gopnik argues,...

"Laura Huang, a preeminent Harvard Business School professor, shows that success is about gaining an edge: that elusive quality that gives you an upper hand and attracts attention and support. Some people seem to naturally have it. Now, Huang teaches the rest of us how to create our own from the challenges and biases we think hold us back, and turning them to work in our favor"--

"In The Real Work--the term magicians use for the accumulated craft that makes for a great trick--Gopnik becomes a dedicated student of several masters of their craft: a classical painter, a boxer, a dancing instructor, a driving instructor, and others. Rejecting self-help bromides and bullet points, he nevertheless shows that the top people in any field share a set of common qualities and methods. For one, their mastery is always a process of breaking...