Amazon.com (ISBN 0028647521, Hardcover)

After 30 years of recording and performing, Richard Thompson remains the nightmare of every marketing department: he is an obvious genius who simply can't be slipped past the radar of the mainstream audience. Thompson himself seems nonplussed. He continues to write marvelously mordant songs, and to wring his own brand of Celtic angst from the electric guitar. Meanwhile, the journalist Patrick Humphries has taken on the Boswell role, taping hours of interviews and running down all the requisite sources. The result is this lively Life of Thompson, which includes an airtight discography and some goofy photos that only a fearless man would allow to be published.