The Rest Is Noise is Alex Ross‘s big, fat book about 20th century music. Classical music, to be precise.

It’s a huge book, in it’s scope as well as it’s impact. Politics, revolutions, the connections of wars and operas and prejudices and composers. It’s like opening my eyes to a world of relations of which I had no previous conception. It’s a once in a lifetime book, probably one of the ten best I’ve ever read.

It’s certainly been praised enough that you don’t need me to recommend it, but I even met a young cellist who’d not heard of it, so, just in case …