Turning the Tables, a multiplatform series intended to highlight women's often sidelined role in popular music, launched on NPR in 2017. With the rabble-rousing How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History from NPR Music, Alison Fensterstock has assembled a Turning the Tables greatest-hits compilation, with bonus tracks culled from half a century of NPR chatter with tuneful women.
Built around photo-flush themed chapters--"Shredders," "Empaths," and so on--How Women Made Music is bursting with feisty essays by Turning the Tables contributors. The book also teems with interview excerpts (as with Nina Simone and Joni Mitchell) and freestanding quotes (Taylor Swift's begins, "I was never convinced I was going to make it"), all pulled from NPR lodestars like Morning Edition and Fresh Air. Throughout, Turning the Tables contributors agitate for their picks for the discussion-provoking list "The 150 Greatest Albums Made by Women." A representatively strong salvo, from Andrea Swensson, on the self-titled first Runaways album: "The Runaways is the sound of a handful of untested chemicals being poured into a beaker and exploding." --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer