Michael Murphy Book

Their late-'70s image as white-suited disco kings has earned them cultural-icon status for all the wrong reasons. In their 4 decade recording career, the Bee Gees have built a singularly impressive body of work encompassing the eccentric art-pop that first made the trio unlikely pop stars in the '60s and the R&B-inflected, falsetto-laced dance pop of their Saturday Night Fever comeback. This 4 CD, 74 song set may be a mite too even-handed historically (thus giving short shrift to the group's prolific '60's output), but it presents a representative sampling of the ups and downs of the group, and includes all of the relevant hits and a generous assortment of rare items. This 4-CD set is very good, but it also isn't quite all it could have been, mostly because the makers were hamstrung by the peculiar nature of the ' audience.

100 Notable Books of 2021: The year’s notable fiction, poetry and nonfiction, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review .