"Women are an essential part of the history of the piano--but how many women pianists can you name? Throughout most of the piano's history, women pianists lacked access to formal training and were excluded from male-dominated performance spaces. Even the modern piano's keys were designed without consideration of women's typically smaller hands. Yet despite their music being largely confined to the domestic sphere, women continued to play, perform,...

"An unprecedented celebration of the evolution, influence, and power of women in popular music. From Bessie Smith to The Supremes, Joan Baez, Madonna, Selena, Beyoncé, Amy Winehouse, Dolly Parton, Sleater-Kinney, Taylor Swift, and scores more, women have played an essential and undeniable role in the evolution of modern music including blues, rock and roll, country, folk, glam rock, punk, and hip hop. Today, in a world once traditionally dominated...

"Music Mavens transports readers around the world (and beyond)--to a jazz performance in Genoa, an instrument lab in London, a Tokyo taiko dojo, a New York City beatbox battle, and even a film scoring session aboard the starship Enterprise, to name a few. Along the way, it spotlights artists whose work spans musical genres and industry roles, including composing and songwriting, performing and conducting, audio engineering, producing, and rock photography....

"Musician and technology phenom Shavone Charles explores how curiosity and nerve led her from a small college in Merced, California, to some of the most influential spaces in the tech world: from Google to Twitter to eventually landing a spot on the coveted Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Grateful for being the first in many spaces, but passionate about being neither the last nor the only, Charles tells her story in the hopes of guiding others and shaping...