can you recommend good books on jazz and coltrane?

Jinnigan

i am looking for two (2) separate books:

one about jazz, as a whole, and the history and development and growth
and another one about coltrane: mostly a bit of biography is what i'm interested in, though i can't imagine a decent biography that doesn't touch on his music

what would be your top pick for these two subjects?

CygnusZ

I don't know about Coltrane, but I recommend reading "Beneath the Underdog" and "Miles", which are the autobiographies of Charles Mingus and Miles Davis respectively. "The History of Jazz" by Ted Gioia is excellent for general jazz history. Just don't expect it to go into much detail on any single thing.

Matt_S

I second "The History of Jazz" by Gioia. It was our textbook for my History of Jazz class and it was an excellent read.

Vorus

I am reading "Jazz: A Critic's Guide to the 100 Most Important Recordings" by Ben Ratliff right now and it is pretty good as far as tracing Jazz history back to its roots and having real examples of the directions it headed

Sheep

Go ahead and pick up Miles.

While it doesn't hold a complete history, it pretty much gives you an idea of how Bop came from Swing and then turned to Hard Bob and Davis practically inventing Cool Jazz, and definitely gives you a run down of Fusion as it grew on the American side of the pond.