Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater Hardcover - 2010

From the rear cover

"Stempel has hit the trifecta: for academics, it's a definitive work of scholarship; for students, it's the perfect textbook; for ordinary lovers of musical theater, it's a treat to savor at the end of a long day."--Rose Rosengard Subotnik, Brown University

"Showtime is a sumptuous banquet of a book. This richly researched history allows us to be present at the birth of the musical theater and to be enthralled witnesses as it develops and metamorphoses into the wealth of forms we now enjoy. A century and a half of entertainment is a vast amount of ground to cover, but Stempel is the ideal tour guide. This is a book to treasure."--Sheldon Harnick

"Showtime is a substantial work of American music history. Scrupulous but not fussy, learned but not pedantic, Stempel is a fine storyteller who delights in clarity and knows a good joke when he sees one. The precision of his thinking and writing gives the book an aura of authority keenly attuned to the tradition he critiques and celebrates." --Richard Crawford, author of America's Musical Life: A History

"I cannot put Showtime down--and it's a heavy book! Showtime is my new favorite companion." --John Mauceri, chancellor, University of North Carolina School of the Arts

"This is the book we have been waiting for--thoroughly readable and smart, informative and engaging." --Ted Chapin, president, Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization

"This is by far the best book ever written about Broadway, a magisterial critical history, which will be required reading for anyone interested in musical theater." --Kim H. Kowalke, Eastman School of Music

Media reviews

Citations

• Choice, 05/01/2011, Page 0
• Kirkus Best Books, 12/15/2010, Page 14
• Kirkus Reviews, 07/01/2010, Page 613
• New York Times Book Review, 12/05/2010, Page 48
• Publishers Weekly, 07/05/2010, Page 34
• Reference and Research Bk News, 11/01/2010, Page 248