If you love musical theatre works from 1866 thru 1960 - this is the book for you. Exhaustively researched. However, if you never ended the affair, and love Sondheim, Coleman, Fosse, Kander & Ebb, Champion, Lapine, Tune, Bennett, McNally, Herman, Hamlisch, Patinkin, Peters and LuPone - well, this probably ISN'T the book for you. The first 100 years are wonderfully detailed. Six paragraphs on "Show Boat" alone. Great. However, the author seems to have lost interest in his subject matter. The greatest shows of the past forty years are lucky to get a single paragraph. The last sections of the book feel passionless and rushed, the reportage at best perfunctory. It's too bad that someone like Ethan Mordan couldn't revisit and revise these decades. $ - wow! Listen, buy a used copy of the first edition (it goes up to 1978), than look for some of Mordan's books or Ken Mendelbaum's "Not Since Carrie."

American Musical Theater by Gerald Bordman, is a text that I am currently using for a college class. To keep this review Short I will not go into great length about the specifics of the book. Just let me say that it is long, (800+ pages) and it feels that way. It is sorta like reading a dictionary, or index. What I mean is, there is soo much information, both usefull and useless, that deciphering it becomes an impossible task. If you were to read a dictionary cover to cover, how many words would you actually learn? The musicals are grouped according to year and season, not overall importance. Also, when a show is revived, it breaks this year by year context, creating more confusion. Perhaps ranking in order of importance would promote unity. Otherwise I would recommend a lighter book of similar subject matter. Still as a complete resource, this book is invaluable, in the same way a dictionary is to spelling questions, this book is to questions on American musicals.