"Jazz Music: What It Is and How to Understand It " Isaac Goldberg, 1927 (No. 470 - Little Blue Book)
 
This little Blue Book serves as a fascinating cultural artifact from the height of the Jazz Age. Goldberg, a sophisticated critic and biographer of George Gershwin, attempts to demystify the "modern" sounds of the era for a general audience. The text moves beyond dismissing jazz as mere noise, instead providing a serious analysis of its rhythmic complexities, its roots in African-American musical traditions, and its evolution into a distinctively American art form. Like other titles in the Haldeman-Julius series, it was designed to provide affordable, "proletarian" education, fitting a wealth of musicology into a pocket-sized, 64-page pamphlet that championed jazz as a legitimate subject of intellectual study.