Don McLeese has been an award-winning critic of the popular arts at the Chicago Sun-Times and the Austin American-Statesman, and has written for dozens of national publications, including The New York Times Book Review, Rolling Stone (where he was a frequent contributor and columnist), the Oxford American, Entertainment Weekly, salon.com, and many others. He is the author of Kick Out the Jams and has contributed to The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, Rolling Stone's The Decades of Rock & Roll, The Encyclopedia of Chicago History, The Best of No Depression: Writing About American Music, the Country Music Foundation's Country on Compact Disc and its Encyclopedia of Country… Music. He is associate professor of journalism at the University of Iowa, where his courses include arts and culture journalism.