The book comprises a narrative of the rock and roll culture in post-WWII West Germany, along with chapters focusing on individual major artists, including Faust, Tangerine Dream, Neu!, Amon Düül I and II, Ash Ra Tempel, Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser and the Cosmic Jokers and advocate of psychedelic drugs Timothy Leary. It also has an annotated appendix of "50 Kosmische Classics." - Wikipedia
Spotify's Germany team is definitely doing a great job: on day one I already discovered many newly added recordings from German labels: as far as I know, German language version of Kraftwerk (Computerliebe sounds more like the future than Computer Love) and Sergius Golowin appeared for the first time today, and I also saw more recordings from Faust and NEU!. I made this playlist in 2010, when only 24 albums out of Cope's 50 choices were available; today I found 10 more.
Here's the Spotify playlist: Krautrocksampler: Julian Cope's 50 Kosmische Classics (226 tracks, total time: 46 hours) Ctrl (CMD)+G to browse in album view. I haven't read Krautrocksampler (because it's long been out of print and a used copy goes for $200), but Cope's Japrocksampler was such an eye-opener and a great pleasure to read. Get them when a copy at reasonable price appears, you will find music that other people don't dare to tell you.
