Greg Prato, an esteemed music journalist who has written extensively for many different prestigious publications, has assembled an oral history of grunge. This style of music grew during the late '80s and '90s in the Pacific Northwest and really found focus and gained attention when Kurt Cobain put together Nirvana and shook up the entire world.

Grunge Is Dead found life when the author was writing an article on Soundgarden for the English publication Classic Rock. While interviewing the band's producer, Jack Endino, Prato stumbled upon an idea: "What if a book was comprised of nothing but quotes from the actual people that experienced the movement firsthand, tracing it from its very beginning to its end?" That is what he writes in the introduction to this book.

He engaged in almost 130 interviews with the key players in the grunge movement. Included here are

• Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam)
• Kim Thayil (Soundgarden)
• Jerry Cantrell (Alice in Chains)
• Duff McKagan (Guns N' Roses)
• Bruce Pavitt/Jonathan Poneman (Sub Pop Records founders)

There is a lot of research here, and many insights are revealed. The book opens with an overview of the '60s and '70s and how that gave way to the flannel-and-shorts of the late '80s and '90s. One of the best books around in explaining this relatively short-lived phenomenon.