The 20 best David Bowie books

As we approach the 10th anniversary of David Bowie’s death, the new February 2026 issue of Uncut – in shops now or available to order online by clicking here – asks a clutch of Bowie experts what they think the great man would be up to now, if he were still with us.

Among those experts are Paul Morley and Alexander Larman, who have both just published fascinating new Bowie biographies (Far Above The World: The Time And Space Of David Bowie and Lazarus: The Second Coming Of David Bowie respectively). Which has prompted us to revisit Uncut’s previous list of best Bowie books, as published in The Complete David Bowie, January 2023…

20 WHERE’S BOWIE?
KEV GAHAN
Where did David Bowie go when he took leave of this world in January 2016? Mars? The Villa of Ormen? Was he uploaded to the internet as a drifting consciousness? Or did he retreat to some Bromley of the Bardo? You can spend hours looking for him in this oddly endearing spin on Where’s Wally?.

19 BLACKSTAR THEORY
LEAH KARDOS
Bowie evidently packed his farewell album with enough puzzles and mysteries to keep fans and critics busy for several decades of his vivid afterlife. Academic and musicologist Kardos does sterling work in exploring their possible meanings while staying grounded in the sublime music Bowie was creating as he took his final curtain.

18 STARDUST, RAYGUNS & MOONAGE DAYDREAMS
MICHAEL ALLRED/STEVE HORTON/LAURA ALLRED
From the early days of The Hype, Bowie was enthralled by comic books, so it’s only fitting that one of the best versions of his story is this superbly psychedelic graphic novelisation, with Mike Allred bringing his Sandman flair to Ziggy.

17 DAVID BOWIE IS
VICTORIA BROACKES
Though it was conceived as a celebration of the man’s ongoing artistic vitality, the David Bowie Is… exhibition at the V&A museum turned out to be one of his most moving epitaphs. The accompanying book, complete with contributions from Camille Paglia and Jon Savage, can’t recreate the experience but is a worthy souvenir.

16 WHY BOWIE MATTERS
WILL BROOKER
Since his death there have been a slew of academic studies of Bowie, but Brooker’s is the best, drawing on his own “immersive research” (he spent a year dressing, eating and posing as Bowie) and pondering the way fan communities now contest the afterlife.

15 THE AGE OF BOWIE
PAUL MORLEY
Written in 10 weeks following Bowie’s death in 2016, Morley’s book makes a virtue of its haste, presenting a breathless, kaleidoscopic portrait of the man, but is grounded very much in the rapture of a young provincial teen whose life was warped forever by fleeting moments in 1972.

14 BOWIE IN BERLIN
THOMAS JEROME SEABROOK
Fleeing the cocaine psychosis of LA in 1975, Bowie wound up in Schöneberg, Berlin, with Iggy Pop – a period documented in Seabrook’s book, which charts how the time and place fed into some of the bravest, most brilliant records of his career.

13 BOWIE, BOLAN AND THE BROOKLYN BOY
TONY VISCONTI
Though it covers the whole of his rich and storied career in production, the most compelling pages in Visconti’s autobiography are inevitably the ones where he joins Bowie, from 1968’s “In The Heat Of The Morning” through the Berlin years and beyond.

12 FROM STATION TO STATION: TRAVELS WITH BOWIE 1973–1976
GEOFF MacCORMACK
Childhood friend turned backing singer, MacCormack joined Bowie on ocean liners and transcontinental train journeys, from Japan to New Mexico, and documents their journeys and Bowie’s protracted crack-up in over 200 surreally candid photos.

11 SPIDER FROM MARS
WOODY WOODMANSEY
Turning down the offer of a steady job in Hull in order to kip on the floor of Haddon Hall, apply eyeliner and wear velour and heels in the fledgling Spiders From Mars, Woody’s drummer’s-eye view of the rise and fall of Ziggy captures the madness and the bathos better than anyone.

10 THE GOLDEN YEARS
ROGER GRIFFIN
Though it’s inevitably not as rich as Kevin Cann’s chronology, this day-by-day guide by the creator of the indispensable Bowie Golden Years website does an incredible job in detailing the speed of Bowie’s trajectory through the 1970s.

9 ZIGGYOLOGY
SIMON GODDARD
Though he’s now embarked on his Bowie Odyssey, tracking the career year-by-year through the ’70s, Goddard’s novelistic take on Ziggy is an essential read, placing Bowie’s cosmic rise firmly in the context of brown-and-orange Bromley, 1971.

8 BACKSTAGE PASSES
ANGELA BOWIE
As irresistibly scandalous as it is factually dubious, Angie’s memoir of her part in Bowie’s triumph details the decadent demi-monde of early-’70s London and Bowie’s transformation from tousle-haired troubadour to leper messiah.

7 MOONAGE DAYDREAM
MICK ROCK AND DAVID BOWIE
Arguably the closest Bowie ever got to an autobiography, this collaboration with photographer Mick Rock lavishly documents the rise of Ziggy, but is most impressive for Bowie’s own text, detailing shoe-shopping expeditions with Cyrinda Foxe and tea parties with Elton.

6 THE PITT REPORT
KENNETH PITT
Though he cast Pitt aside for Tony DeFries in his early-’70s bid for the big time, Bowie stayed in touch with his first serious manager to the end. Pitt’s memoir fondly documents his crucial time with his protégé, from their first meeting in 1966 to the final parting in 1970.

5 STARMAN
PAUL TRYNKA
Though not updated since its publication in 2012, and lacking a real critical point of view, Trynka’s book may still be the most reliable, detailed and well-documented single volume biography of the man and his music.

4 STRANGE FASCINATION
DAVID BUCKLEY
Drawing upon his own PhD thesis on Bowie, written during the Tin Machine years, Buckley’s biography was one of the first books to reckon seriously with the career, benefitting from input from the man himself and key associates such as Tony Visconti.

3 REBEL REBEL/ASHES TO ASHES
CHRIS O’LEARY
Originally conceived in 2009 as a blog, a fantastic voyage through Bowie’s career song by song in the style of Ian MacDonald’s Beatles opus Revolution In The Head, O’Leary’s work is now available in two doorstop-size volumes, finding rich contexts for songs from “Liza Jane” (1964) to Blackstar and beyond.

2 THE COMPLETE DAVID BOWIE
NICHOLAS PEGG
Originally published in 2000, and now in its seventh updated edition, Pegg’s bible is an exhaustive A-Z gazetteer of Bowieopolis, covering the songs, the albums, the films, the collaborations and the rich and strange apocrypha of this singular career.

1 ANY DAY NOW – DAVID BOWIE THE LONDON YEARS: 1947–1974
KEVIN CANN
As the world’s pre-eminent Bowie archivist, Kevin Cann has played a guiding role in the continuing stream of exhibitions and reissues, but his masterpiece is this matchless, richly illustrated, day-by-day chronology of Bowie’s journey from Brixton to the stars.