Paul Hegarty teaches Philosophy and Visual Culture at University College Cork, in Ireland. He is the author of Noise/Music (Continuum, 2007). He jointly runs the experimental record label dotdotdotmusic, and performs in the noise bands Safe and La Société des Amis du Crime. Martin Halliwell is Professor of American Studies at the University of Leicester, UK. He is the author of American Culture in the 1950s (Columbia UP, 2007) and editor of two series for Edinburgh University Press: Twentieth-Century American Culture and Edinburgh Critical Guides to Literature.

Examining every aspect of progressive rock - words and music, theatre and politics - Hegarty and Halliwell deftly unpick the tangled threads of tradition and radicalism that make up the genre's tapestry. In addition to shedding vital new light on an often maligned and misunderstood phase in rock's history, this probing and incisive study tracks prog's continued and unexpected reverberations through popular music  long after punk had supposedly vanquished and banished it.

• Introduction Progressive Rock since the 1960s Part 1: Before and During Chapter 1 Extended Form Chapter 2 Roots of Progressive Rock Chapter 3 Out of the Garden Chapter 4 The Concept Album Chapter 5 Myth and Modernity Chapter 6 Progressive Fusion Chapter 7 Performance and Visuality Part 2: BeyondChapter 8 Social Critique Chapter 9 Responses to Punk Chapter 10 Neo-Progressive Chapter 11 The Female Voice Chapter 12 Post-Progressive Chapter 13 The Return of Folk Chapter 14 The Metal Progression Coda: The Future Now Discography Videography Bibliography Index