Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music And Changed American Culture

"Take it from someone who lived there: Athens exists in its own space and out of time. You already know R.E.M., the B-52s and maybe even Pylon – their origin stories are told in this deeply researched (but personally written) history of the ‘80s music scene with a lived-in attention to detail. But there are so many musicians, professors, painters, poets and indescribable personalities who have made and still make Athens a Southern bohemia. Grace Elizabeth Hale weaves together a history of the university’s art school, punk’s do-it-yourself ethos and queer communities (both out and not) as the South’s ever-evolving identity sprawled and crawled like kudzu."