An NPR Best Book of the Year and winner of the Virgil Thomson Award for Outstanding Music Criticism.

"This is the best book about the Beatles ever written" - Mashable

Rob Sheffield, the Rolling Stone columnist and bestselling author of Love Is a Mix Tape offers an entertaining, unconventional look at the most popular band in history, the Beatles, exploring what they mean today and why they still matter so intensely to a generation that has never known a world without them.

Dreaming the Beatles is not another biography of the Beatles, or a song-by-song analysis of the best of John and Paul. It isnt another expose about how they broke up. It isnt a history of their gigs or their gear.

It is a collection of essays telling the story of what this ubiquitous band means to a generation who grew up with the Beatles music on their parents stereos and their faces on T-shirts. What do the Beatles mean today? Why are they more famous and beloved now than ever? And why do they still matter so much to us, nearly fifty years after they broke up?

As he did in his previous books, Love is a Mix Tape, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, and Turn Around Bright Eyes, Sheffield focuses on the emotional connections we make to music. This time, he focuses on the biggest pop culture phenomenon of all time: The Beatles.

In his singular voice, he explores what the Beatles mean today, to fans who have learned to love them on their own terms and not just for the sake of nostalgia. Dreaming the Beatles tells the story of how four lads from Liverpool became the worlds biggest pop group, then broke upbut then somehow just kept getting bigger. At this point, their music doesnt belong to the pastit belongs to right now.

This book is a celebration of that music, showing why the Beatles remain the worlds favorite thingand how they invented the future were all living in today.