Reading List

Authors Like Amanda Petrusich

For her third book, Amanda Petrusich learned to scuba dive and went into the Milwaukee River at Grafton, Wisconsin, where employees of Paramount Records were said to have thrown records away when the company closed in the 1930s. She found none. Paramount had pressed around a quarter of all the “race records” released between 1922 and 1932, and some of those blues 78s now survive in a single copy, kept by a handful of collectors. Petrusich, a staff writer at The New Yorker who teaches writing at NYU’s Gallatin School, became a collector herself while writing Do Not Sell at Any Price (2014), after a short book on Nick Drake’s Pink Moon (2007) and a road trip through American roots music, It Still Moves (2008). The ten writers below share her two subjects: music as a way into a country’s history, and the people who cannot stop looking for it.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Music writing · Collectors & obsession · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you like Amanda Petrusich, start with John Jeremiah Sullivan, whose 2014 essay “The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie” goes after two forgotten blues singers through the same world of 78 collectors. Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief is the closest book about obsessive collecting outside music, and Greil Marcus is the critic who taught a generation to hear old American records as history. Below are ten writers, including one who argues that the collectors’ version of the blues is a myth.

10 authors like Amanda Petrusich

01
Chasing a lost record

John Jeremiah Sullivan

American · Blood Horses (2004), Pulphead (2011)

Sullivan was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1974. Pulphead collects fourteen of his magazine pieces, on subjects from a Christian rock festival to Michael Jackson. In 2014 The New York Times Magazine published “The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie”, his search for the blues singers Geeshie Wiley and Elvie Thomas, who recorded for Paramount and then disappeared from the record. He won the Windham–Campbell Prize for non-fiction in 2015.

The nearest neighbour on the shelf. Sullivan and Petrusich are working the same ground — Paramount’s blues singers, the collectors who keep their records, the gap between a voice on shellac and a life nobody wrote down — and both put themselves in the story without making it about themselves.

— Lisanne

Every book by John Jeremiah Sullivan →

02
The collector as a character

Susan Orlean

American · The Orchid Thief (1998), The Library Book (2018)

Orlean was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1955 and has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. The Orchid Thief follows a man charged with taking rare orchids from a Florida swamp, and the wider world of people who collect them; it became the basis for the 2002 film Adaptation. The Library Book is about the 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Central Library.

Do Not Sell at Any Price and The Orchid Thief are built the same way: a reporter goes into a closed world of collectors, tries to understand what they want, and ends up wanting some of it too. Orlean’s subject is plants rather than records, which makes her the best next step for readers who came for the obsession more than the music.

— Lisanne

Every book by Susan Orlean →

03
Old records as American history

Greil Marcus

American · Mystery Train (1975), Lipstick Traces (1989), Invisible Republic (1997)

Marcus was born in San Francisco in 1945. Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ’n’ Roll Music reads American history through a handful of musicians, and Lipstick Traces follows a line from Dada to punk. Invisible Republic, about Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes, was reissued as The Old, Weird America in 2001.

Marcus is the critic behind much of what Petrusich takes for granted: that a recording from the 1920s can tell you something about the country that made it. He is more of an essayist and more abstract; she goes to the people and places. Read Invisible Republic next to It Still Moves.

— Lisanne
04
The musicians, in person

Peter Guralnick

American · Feel Like Going Home (1971), Sweet Soul Music (1986), Last Train to Memphis (1994)

Guralnick was born in Boston in 1943. Feel Like Going Home is a set of portraits of blues, country and rock ’n’ roll musicians; Sweet Soul Music is a history of Southern soul. His two-volume life of Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love (1999), is the standard biography. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2010.

Guralnick did in the 1960s and 1970s what Petrusich does in It Still Moves: travel to where the music was made and listen to the people who made it. He writes with more patience and less irony, and his books are where many of today’s collectors first heard the names.

— Lisanne

Every book by Peter Guralnick →

05
The case against the myth

Elijah Wald

American · How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll (2009), Dylan Goes Electric! (2015)

Wald was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1959 and is a musician as well as a historian of popular music. His book Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues examines how the blues came to be understood the way it is, and much of his work takes apart the myths that grow around musicians. He won a Grammy in 2002 for his liner notes to an Arhoolie Records box set.

The writer on this list who complicates Petrusich’s subject most directly. Where her collectors treasure the rare, raw 78, Wald asks what the audiences of the time actually bought and listened to, and how much of the blues canon was chosen afterwards by collectors and critics. Read him to argue with the romance.

— Lisanne
06
The record collector in fiction

Nick Hornby

English · Fever Pitch (1992), High Fidelity (1995), 31 Songs (2003)

Hornby was born in Redhill, Surrey, in 1957. Fever Pitch is an account of his devotion to Arsenal; High Fidelity, his first novel, is about a neurotic record collector and his failed relationships. 31 Songs (published in the US as Songbook) is a book of essays on individual songs. Some critics have called his music writing traditionalist, citing his negative review of Radiohead’s Kid A.

High Fidelity is the comic version of the collectors in Do Not Sell at Any Price: a man whose records are easier to manage than his life. Hornby is lighter and more personal than Petrusich, but both are honest about what collecting does to the people who do it.

— Lisanne
07
Jazz, imagined

Geoff Dyer

English · But Beautiful (1991), Out of Sheer Rage (1997)

Dyer was born in Cheltenham in 1958. But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz mixes invented scenes from the lives of jazz musicians with criticism, and won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1992. Out of Sheer Rage is nominally a book about failing to write a book on D. H. Lawrence.

An English writer on American music who, like Petrusich, refuses to choose between reporting, criticism and the first person. But Beautiful is freer with the facts than she would ever be — it imagines what the archive cannot show — which makes it a useful contrast to her method.

— Lisanne
08
Music as memory

Hanif Abdurraqib

American · Go Ahead in the Rain (2019), A Little Devil in America (2021)

Abdurraqib was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1983 and is a poet as well as an essayist. Go Ahead in the Rain is about A Tribe Called Quest, and A Little Devil in America is a book of essays on Black performance in America. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2021; There’s Always This Year (2024), on basketball, was longlisted for the National Book Award.

Abdurraqib writes about why a record matters to the person listening, which is where Petrusich’s collectors begin. He is more lyrical and more autobiographical, and he brings into the centre the Black musicians whose 78s her collectors chase.

— Lisanne
09
Against rock snobbery

Kelefa Sanneh

American · Major Labels (2021)

Sanneh was born in Birmingham, England, in 1976 and has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2008, after working as a pop critic at The New York Times. His 2004 essay “The Rap Against Rockism” argued against valuing older, ‘authentic’ music above current pop. Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres is his first book.

Petrusich’s colleague at The New Yorker, and a necessary counterweight. The collectors she follows prize the old and the obscure; Sanneh asks why the popular should count for less. Reading the two together shows how much of music writing is an argument about taste.

— Lisanne
10
The critic as fan

Lester Bangs

American · Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1987)

Bangs was born in Escondido, California, in 1948, edited Creem in Detroit in the 1970s and died in New York in 1982, aged 33. His writing was collected after his death in Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, edited by Greil Marcus, and Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste (2003). His 1979 essay “The White Noise Supremacists” examined racism in the punk scene, including his own.

The writer who predates the whole genre of first-person music writing that Petrusich works in. Bangs is loud, funny and often unfair; she is careful and precise. But both are frank about being fans first and critics second.

— Lisanne

Where to start if you loved Amanda Petrusich

If you loved Do Not Sell at Any Price, read John Jeremiah Sullivan.

“The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie” (2014): the same Paramount records, and the singers behind them.

If you want obsession without the music, read Susan Orlean.

The Orchid Thief: a reporter inside a world of rare-plant collectors.

If you loved It Still Moves, read Peter Guralnick.

Feel Like Going Home: portraits of blues, country and rock ’n’ roll musicians, from 1971.

If you want an argument, read Elijah Wald.

His Robert Johnson book, Escaping the Delta, questions how the blues canon was made.

If you are new to Petrusich, start with Do Not Sell at Any Price.

Then go back to It Still Moves (2008) and her 33⅓ book on Nick Drake’s Pink Moon (2007).

Frequently asked questions about authors like Amanda Petrusich

Who writes like Amanda Petrusich?

John Jeremiah Sullivan is the closest: his essay “The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie” works the same world of Paramount blues records and their collectors. Susan Orlean, Greil Marcus and Peter Guralnick are the next places to go.

What should I read after Do Not Sell at Any Price?

Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief (1998) for collecting as an obsession, and John Jeremiah Sullivan’s “The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie” (2014) for the blues singers themselves. Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity (1995) is the comic novel of the record collector.

Is Amanda Petrusich like Greil Marcus?

They share a belief that old American records are a way into the country’s history. Marcus is more of an essayist and more abstract; Petrusich travels to the people and places and reports what she finds.

Does Amanda Petrusich have a new book?

Her most recent book is Do Not Sell at Any Price (2014). Since then her music writing has appeared mainly in The New Yorker, where she is a staff writer.

Which Amanda Petrusich book should I read first?

Start with Do Not Sell at Any Price (2014), her book about collectors of rare 78rpm records. Then go back to It Still Moves (2008) and her 33⅓ book on Nick Drake’s Pink Moon (2007).

Did Amanda Petrusich find records in the Milwaukee River?

No. She dived in the river at Grafton, Wisconsin, where Paramount employees were said to have thrown records away when the company closed in the 1930s, and did not find any.

Sources

List last reviewed 31 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

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