Greil Marcus’ Mystery Train is a book for geeks, in the best way. Marcus writes distinctly about American musicians -- Harmonica Frank, Robert Johnson, The Band, Sly Stone, Randy Newman, and Elvis -- and what they and their music reflect about this country.

Here’s the geeky part: In the recently released fifth edition (it was first published in 1975), the Notes and Discographies section is longer than the book proper. The primary section of essays comes in at an economical 177 pages, while the discography, in which Marcus goes through each featured artist’s catalog, track by track, spans 192 pages. It includes passages like this one, about A Legendary Performer, an Elvis compilation:

"We hear ‘Love Me Tender,’ the title song from Elvis’s first movie; we hear ‘(There’ll Be) Peace in the Valley (For Me),’ from 1957 -- Elvis’s first, and perhaps best, gospel recording. Then to the similarly parenthetical but otherwise utterly opposite ‘(Now and Then There’s) A Fool Such As I,’ from 1958, where Elvis distances himself from his style with outrageous parody; then to ‘Tonight’s All Right for Love,’ a ghastly number from the 1960 film G.I. Blues, where the parody has become the style.