Alex Ross' 5 most important books

Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker since 1996 and author of The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, recently told Newsweek about his five most important books.

And answered a related question:

A book to which you always return:

I always have Wallace Stevens's poems by my desk. They recharge my love of language.

Read more about Ross' five most important books.

--Marshal Zeringue