From the heart of "mossy, briny, piss-colored" 1970s Times Square to the heights of MTV News and the A&R suites of Atlantic Records, Tim Sommer has lived a dozen lives in the service of music.

Dispatches From the Kingdom of Outsiders is a defiant, soulful map of the ephemeral nation built by the lonely and the weird young people who found their first true home in a Sex Pistols 45 or a picture of David Bowie. Part memoir, part high-octane cultural criticism, this collection documents a vanished era when knowledge was precious currency and a T-shirt was a flare sent up to find fellow survivors.

Whether he's trying to get the Clash to sign a picture of the Beatles, sitting in a dorm room with U2 or explaining why "Wooly Bully" is the heaviest song in history, Sommer writes with the infectious "bizarrely certain" passion of the 16-year-old office boy he once was. This is more than a book about rock and roll, it is a celebration of the "Kingdom" where admission is free, and outsiders finally belong.

Sample chapter titles:

• I Was Almost a Temporary Beastie Boy
• Meet the Beatles' First Left-Handed Bassist
• What Was the First Punk Rock Record?
• I Watch in Awe and Terror While Johnny Depp and Evan Dando Nearly Kill Themselves
• Uncle Schrödinger's Band (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Like Listen to the Grateful Dead)
• Weezer's "Africa" Is the Most Repugnant Pop Recording of All Time
• Sha Na Na Was the Most Important Band at Woodstock
• How Kent State Helped Create the Template for American Indie Rock