If You Like The Sopranos… Available Now From Limelight Editions

Dec. 29, 2011 - PRLog -- Hal Leonard Performing Arts Publishing Group is thrilled to announce a new series for music, movie, and television fans. The If You Like series plays the game of cultural connectivity at a high level—each book is written by an expert in their field and travels far beyond the expected, unearthing treats that will enlighten even the most jaded couch potato or pop culture vulture.  The series launches this November with If You Like the Beatles… (Backbeat Books) and If You Like The Sopranos… (Limelight Editions, $14.99). In January 2012, If You Like Monty Python… (Limelight Editions) will join the series. Every volume tackles several genres, so If You Like the Beatles… introduces the reader not only to records, but to movies and TV shows as well, just as the Sopranos and the Monty Python editions of the If You Like series tackle jewels beyond the small screen.

From Robin Hood and his Merry Men to the bloody aftermath of Macbeth, fictional lawbreakers have been both celebrated and vilified in every era. And as long as there have been criminals, both real and imag¬ined, there have been people to tell stories about them. It is only appropriate that The Sopranos appeared when it did, in the dying days of the twentieth century, a century that became a fruitful time for crime dramas due to advancements in art and technology, as well as a reality all too eager to supply the material—advancements in “organized crime.” If You Like The Sopranos… provides an illuminating portrait of those elements that came together to create the stellar artistic achievement that is The Sopra¬nos, and it follows the new trails the television show left when it exploded into the cultural consciousness, heralding the arrival of a new era of storytelling.

Leonard Pierce (Dallas, TX) has obsessed over movies, music, TV, and books since childhood, and has turned that obsession into work that has appeared on TV.com, Nerve.com, the AV Club, the Chicago Tribune, McSweeney’s, and many other places. He is a cofounder of the High Hat, an online magazine of arts and culture, and the proprietor of LudicLive.com.