HOT TYPE ELISSA SCHAPPELL

So you wanna meet the band? How bad? David Konow's Bang Your Head (Three Rivers) deifies heavy metal's amp-loving sinners in spandex, debauched power balladeers such as Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Motorhead, and Metallica, dudes who single-handedly keep the hair-spray industry in business.

Riff on these: In Jazz Modernism (Knopf), Alfred Appel Jr. creates unexpected connections between the jazz of Armstrong, Waller, and Holiday and the art of Picasso, Matisse, and Joyce. Journalist Selwyn Seyfu Hines testifies to the pervasive violence and nihilism in hip-hop culture in Gunshots in My Cook Up (Atria). Lewis Lockwood remembers one of music's first rebels in a wig in Beethoven (Norton). Spencer Drate spins 45 RPM (Princeton Architectural), a visual history of the seven-inch record sleeves from Dean Martin to the Sex Pistols. Snaps of the Hip Hop Immortals (Immortal Brand), from Kurtis Blow to Tupac Shakur, compose this staggering seven-pound honey. Ask Grandmaster Flash, a teenage LL Cool J, or a baby-faced Queen Latifah Who Shot Ya? (Amistad) and the answer will be photographer Ernie Paniccioli. Ashley Kahn explores the mythology behind the creation of John Coltrane's masterwork, the spiritual opus A Love Supreme (Viking). In conversations with his best friend, the conductor and writer Robert Craft, Igor Stravinsky reflects on his childhood, his peers, and his personal relationships in Memories and Commentaries (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Steve Turner unveils the history of Amazing Graee (HarperCollins), America's most tear-jerking hymn, which was composed by a former slave trader. The father of tropicalismo, Caetano Veloso, trumpets the Brazilian cultural revolution in Tropieal Truth (Knopf). Stoned again, Bill Wyman ponies up an awesome personal archive of Stones memorabilia in Rolling with the Stones (DK Publishing). Steimvay (Chronicle), Ronald V. Rate I iff e, and Stuart Isacoff know pianos. Wingspan (Bulfinch) is a family-style scrapbook of Sir Paul McCartney's band on the run.

Also this month: Karl Kirchwey's newest poems are collected in At the Palace of Jove (Putnam). Charlotte Chandler gets the inimitable Billy Wilder and pals such as Gloria Swanson, Jimmy Stewart, and Tony Curtis to talk in Nobody's Perfect (Simon & Schuster). In Bachelor Girl (Morrow), Betsy Israel salutes single-womanhood from the last century's spinsters to the career gals of today. The guilty secret lives of working mothers is, gasp, exposed in Allison Pearson's novel 1 Don't Know How She Does It (Knopf). I love a man in a uniform! In Uniforms (Houghton Mifflin), Paul Fussed embroiders on why we are what we wear. From the teenage Byron traipsing around his decaying abbey to Henry James's fascination with the Colosseum. Christopher Woodward summons the power In Ruins (Pantheon). A camp counselor struggles with his desire for a teenage boy in Michael Lowenthal's fearless and expertly crafted novel Avoidance (Graywolf)Jeffrey Steingarten, the man who ate everything, returns with It Must Have Been Something I Ate (Knopf). David Wise offers information on how and why the F.B.I.'s Robert Hanssen sold out America to the Russians in Spy (Random House). Anita Naughton and Nicola Perry tell how an English tea shop has made itself indispensable to New York City by proffering kindnesses such as Tea & Sympathy (Putnam). A rose is a rose is The Gertrude Stein Reader (Cooper Square)—Richard Kostelanetz edits a collection of the great avant-garde pioneer. Examining the barbed prose and sly caricature of celebrated wit Max Beerbohm (Yale), N. John Hall is able to capture the great man in full. The cartographic history of the American West from 1524 to 1890 is illustrated in Paul E. Cohen's Mapping the West (Rizzoli). Lewis Lapham's Theater of War (New Press) contends that, thanks to America's cowboy in chief's foreign policy, we are squandering our post-World War II legacy of goodwill. The romantic heroine of Frederic Tuten's The Green Hour (Norton) weighs a life of passion against one of tranquillity. In her debut novel, Rebecca Bloom shows off her Girl Anatomy (Morrow). Photo bug Murray Garrett captures movie idols in the telling, unguarded Hollywood Moments (Abrams). Divine inspiration abounds in interior designer John Stefanidis's Designs (Vendome). Best-selling author but only so-so point guard Pat Conroy remembers My Losing Season (Nan A. Talese). In Mr. Nice (Canongate), fresh from the Terre Haute pokey, the dashing Howard Marks narrates how, through 43 aliases, 89 phone lines, and 25 companies, he was able to smuggle parcels of up to 30 tons of marijuana. Crank it up ...