MacArthur laureate Alex Ross, whose book The Rest Is Noise, a history of classical music in the 20th century, won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, has just received the £10,000 Guardian First Book Award. “The chair of the judging panel, Guardian literary editor Claire Armistead, said: ‘In some quarters this book has been seen as not having a popular appeal. Our prize – which, uniquely, relies on readers’ groups in the early stages of judging – proves that, on the contrary, there is a huge appetite among readers for clear, serious but accessible books.'”