Music journalist Phull describes the stories behind 50 significant protest songs of Anglo- American popular music, from "The Preacher and the Slave," a signature song of the Industrial Workers of the World troubador Joe Hill to the Asian Dub Foundation's 1998 call to "Free Saptal Ram," a British man of Indian descent the band feels has been wrongly imprisoned following a racially-charged incident at an Indian restaurant in Birmingham in 1986. For each song he gives brief facts on the artist, songwriter, album, label, and year; a short synopsis; and a longer discussion of the place of the song in the artist's career, the context of the song's subject matter, its musical characteristics, and its reception. Considering the difficulty of identifying only 50 songs for inclusion out of all the protest music written between 1939 and 1998, Phull's selection is impeccable and reflects well on the diversity of Anglo-American protest music and its subject matter. Among the notable songs he discusses (although all are notable) are Billie Holiday's anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit" (written by the man who would later adopt the orphaned Rosenberg children), Sam Cooke's sublime "A Change Is Gonna Come," Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth," James Brown's "Say It Loud--I'm Black and I'm Proud," the Stooges' proto-punk "1969," Joni Mitchell's environmentalist "Big Yellow Taxi," Black Sabbath's "War Pigs," Bob Marley and the Wailers "Get Up, Stand Up," Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five's social realist "The Message," The Minutemen's anti-Reaganite "Untitled Song for Latin America," and Public Enemy's anthemic "Fight the Power." Phull also supplements the 50 entries with a number of side-boxes providing information on, for example, Dylan protests songs other than the one chosen as a main entry ("Masters of War") or discussion of Woody Guthrie songs sung by Bruce Springsteen. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)