Ben Ratliff has been a music critic for The New York Times since 1996. His book Coltrane- The Story of a Sound was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He lives with his wife and two sons in the Bronx.
Incisive . . . Thanks to Ratliff's vast knowledge, what could have been a dry academic exercise is more like a trip into the world's coolest record store -- David Browne * Rolling Stone * The spectacle of an active mind processing a world in constant flux . . . Maybe, as Ratliff beautifully argues, the brooding aggression of metal obscures a deeper melancholy -- Hua Hsu * New Yorker * A remarkable new book . . . [Ratliff] goes leaping from Beethoven to Big Black, from Morton Feldman to Curtis Mayfield, identifying continuities while delighting in contrasts -- Alex Ross * New Yorker * A music appreciation guide for our era ... Brilliant -- Dan Chiasson * New York Review of Books *