Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits

Spanning Tom Waits'' extraordinary 40-year career, from Closing Time to Orphans, Lowside of the Road is Barney Hoskyns'' unique take on one of rock''s great enigmas. Like Bob Dylan and Neil Young, Waits is a chameleonic survivor who''s achieved long-term success while retaining cult credibility and outsider mystique. From his perilous "jazzbo" years in ''70s Los Angeles to the multiple-Grammy winner of recent years - by way of such shape-shifting ''80s albums as Swordfishtrombones - this exhaustive biography charts Waits'' life step-by-step and album-by-album.

Affectionate and penetrating, and based on a combination of assiduous research and deep critical insight, this is a outstanding investigation of a notoriously private artist and performer - the definitive account to date of Tom Waits'' life and work.