The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones

A panoramic narrative history of the Rolling Stones, viewed through the impassioned and opinionated lens of Vanity Fair contributor Rich Cohen, who traveled with the band in the 1990s as a reporter for Rolling Stone.

Rich Cohen enters the Stones epic as a young journalist on the road with the band and quickly falls under their sway - privy to the jokes, the camaraderie, the bitchiness, the hard living. Inspired by a lifelong appreciation of the music that borders on obsession, Cohen's chronicle of the band is informed by the rigorous views of a kid who grew up on the music and for whom the Stones will always be the greatest rock 'n' roll band of all time.

The story begins at the beginning - the fateful meeting of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on a train platform in 1961 - and goes on to span decades, with a focus on the golden run from the albums Beggars Banquet (1968) to Exile on Main Street (1972), when the Stones were prolific and innovative and at the height of their powers. Cohen is equally as good on the low points as the highs, and he puts his finger on the moments that defined the Stones not only as gifted musicians schooled in the blues and arguably the most innovative songwriters of their generation but as the avatars of so much in our modern culture.

In the end, though, after the drugs and the girlfriends and the rows, there is the music. The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones makes you want to listen to every song in your library anew and search out the obscure gems that you've yet to hear. The music, together with Cohen's fresh and galvanizing consideration of the band, will define, once and forever, why the Stones will always matter.