“MrCompletely” posted this very sweet review of Playing in the Band: An Oral and Visual Portrait of the Grateful Dead on reddit, and I repost it here with his permission.
I still think Playing in the Band is the #1 best book about the Grateful Dead, for the specific reason that it evokes a kind of gut-level understanding of the band and the scene, presenting analysis within an evocative context. The fact that it uses other people’s words so much is one of its particular strengths, because it decenters the authorial voice, so to speak…by embracing multiple subjective viewpoints, it moves beyond the simpler subjective views (sometimes presented with a pretense of objectivity) that color all the other histories I’ve read. In other words I never felt that you were trying to push your own perspective, and in fact seemed to be trying to get out of the way, so to speak. It’s artfully presented as well, with very thoughtful juxtapositions of image, lyric, quote, and explanatory text. It’s really a nice piece of work and holds up extraordinarily well over time.