ANDY HEDGECOCK is entertained by a playful novel that embeds a fictional game at its heart
Green Day FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About the World’s Most Popular Punk Band
Hank Bordowitz
(Backbeat Books, £15.99)
IT’S somewhat audacious to claim that Green Day inspired “nearly as many bands to pick up instruments as Elvis, The Beatles and the Ramones.” Yet that unsubstantiated assertion is one of many hyperbolic flights in Hank Bordowitz’s book.
The journalist, who’s written for the likes of Playboy and Huffington Post, is an unashamed fan-boy of the punk-pop band. Lauding their working-class roots and their lyrical transition “from pot and poop to politics,” he covers everything you wanted to know about the trio and more besides.
BEN COWLES samples the many sonic and social therapies of Manchester Punk Festival 2026, and is ready again to smash capitalism
SUSAN DARLINGTON swoons in the presence of a magnetic frontman
PETER MASON is entertained by the autobiography of Charlie Harper, one of punk’s most enduring figures
KEN COCKBURN relishes the memoir of a translator, but wonders whether the autobiography underlying the impulse would make a better book



