Alan Lomax:  The Man Who Recorded the World 
 
[Starred review] "Factually tireless and fluently analytical, Szwed gamely corrals a great river of events, efforts, and discoveries into a straight-ahead portrait of an intrepid, culture-defining artist and humanist."  
—Booklist 
 
"Szwed is a sensitive interpreter of music. . . he is meticulous about the work, and makes a strong case for Lomax as a central figure in the history of American music."  
—The New Yorker 
 
"A keenly appreciative, enormously detailed new Lomax biography." 
—The New York Times 
 
"John Szwed has written a graceful and informative cradle-to-grave study that's a perfect marriage of author and subject." 
—Douglas Brinkley, Texas Monthly 
 
So What: The Life of Miles Davis 
 
"...Szwed offers crisply detailed backstories to such masterpieces as Sketches of Spain, Round About Midnight and Miles Ahead. His prose has a musical pulse, and he highlights the most significant element of Davis's soul: "he told every woman he became involved with that music always came first, before family, children, lovers, friends." Davis's music has been called a "divine disease," and this in-depth study clarifies the nature of that compulsive, satisfying malady in a way that will enlighten listeners and musicians." 
—Publishers Weekly 
 
Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra 
 
"... Szwed has produced a rare jazz biography—one that takes full account of the history that shaped the music and its central personalities. An anthropologist, historian and musicologist who teaches at Yale, Szwed brings an impressive array of skills to this job. He needs them all to track down a subject whose every word seems intended to protect him from scrutiny." 
—Brent Staples, The New York Times Book Review