33 1/3 is a new series of short books about critically acclaimed and much-loved albums of the last 40 years. Focusing on one album rather than an artist's entire output, the books dispense with the standard biographical background that fans know already, and cut to the heart of the music on each album. The authors provide fresh, original perspectives - often through their access to and relationships with the key figures involved in the recording of these albums. By turns obsessive, passionate, creative, and informed, the books in this series demonstrate many different ways of writing about music. (A task which can be, as Elvis Costello famously observed, as tricky as dancing about architecture.) What binds this series together, and what brings it to life, is that all of the authors - musicians, scholars, and writers - are deeply in love with the album they have chosen.

"Author Harvard has succeeded in finding the right mix between objective research and personal connection with his subject." - Record Collector, October 2004

"A bite-sized look at the creation of one of the more seminal albums of our time....well worth dipping into." - Shredded Paper Magazine, Fall 2004 issue

"The splendidly named Harvard sees the Velvets through the eyes neither bleary nor jaded nor excessively worshipful, and among many sharp insights nails the idea that it wasn't just LouLouLou with, oh yeah, John Cale and the chick who split after this debut and the drummer who played standing up and the bass player who moved to Austin. Anybody who's heard "Sunday Morning" as the sun's coming up on a Sunday morning knows the Velvets were a BAND, and for these two sides of vinyl there was no more powerful idea. A-" - Austin American-Statesman

"[Harvard] has the material as well as the gift of gab." - Boston Herald