After Kurt Cobain's death three years ago, the folks at Rolling Stone managed to put this tribute book together and get it on the street in a little over six months. And since Cobain is mostly a collection of articles and reviews that ran in Rolling Stone while Cobain was alive, you could argue that six months was a respectful interval. Its cost in hardcover, however, was prohibitively expensive for most of his fans. Now, years later, there's finally a decent trade paperback that's only mildly overpriced. It's a handsome book, full of ultra-hip grained-out color photographs and distressed type, as much a celebration of the man as a commemoration. If looks were enough, and they will be for many, Cobain is very good. But the pieces reprinted here—including reviews of recordings and concerts, several little bios, puff pieces about his lifestyle, reportage on his suicide, eulogizing by Rolling Stone staffers, and so on—are a bit confused. When read in succession, they give many different ideas of who Cobain was, agreeing only that his was the voice of a generation. It's sad, as sad as anything else about Cobain's career, that his voice, generation, life and death were all equally unfathomable to the magazine. This book might have been an interesting cultural document, but instead it's for fans only.