Show Tunes: The Songs, Shows, and Careers of Broadway's Major Composers »

Steven Suskin is the author of The Sound of Broadway Music: a Book of Orchestrators and Orchestrations [OUP, February 2009], Second Act Trouble, the Opening Night on Broadway series and a half-dozen other books about the Broadway musical. He has also written hundreds of columns and reviews for Playbill, Variety and other publications. He began his theatrical career as a teenaged assistant at the David Merrick office, followed by twenty-five years as a manager and producer.

Show Tunes fully chronicles the shows, songs, and careers of the major composers of the American musical theatre, from Jerome Kern's earliest interpolations to the latest hits on Broadway. Legendary composers like Gershwin, Rodgers, Porter, Berlin, Bernstein, and Sondheim have been joined by more recent songwriters like Stephen Schwartz, Stephen Flaherty, Michael John LaChiusa, and Adam Guettel. This majestic reference book covers their work, their innovations, their successes, and their failures. Show Tunes is simply the most comprehensive volume of its kind ever produced, and this newly revised and updated edition discusses almost 1,000 shows and 9,000 show tunes. The book has been called "a concise skeleton key to the Broadway musical" (Variety) and "a ground-breaking reference work with a difference" (Show Music)-or, as the Washington Post observed, "It makes you sing and dance all over your memory."
The eagerly anticipated Fourth Edition, updated through May, 2009, features the entire theatrical output of forty of Broadway's leading composers, in addition to a wide selection of work by other songwriters. The listings include essential production data and statistics, the most extensive information available on published and recorded songs, and lively commentary on the shows, songs, and diverse careers. Based on meticulous research, the book also uncovers dozens of lost musicals-including shows that either closed out of town or were never headed for Broadway-and catalogs hundreds of previously unknown songs, including a number of musical gems that have been misplaced, cut, or forgotten. Informative, insightful, and provocative, Show Tunes is an essential guide for anyone interested in the American musical.

Library Journal

This is an impressive compilation of the work of 30 top Broadway composers, divided into three parts by generation. Spanning 1905 to June 1985, the productions covered are presented in three sections: Show Data, including relevant dates, theaters and cities, composers, lyricists, and choreographers; Song Information, a guide to all published songs from each show; and Commentary, the author's brief comments on why and how composers wrote what they did. The book's greatest assets are its exhaustive song listings (which include songs reused in different productions, and differing versions of songs), and its coverage of recent productions. While good as a comprehensive reference work, it doesn't attempt as much exposition as other books like Stanley Green's Encyclopedia of Musical Theatre (Dodd, 1976). Recommended. Daniel J. Lombardo, Jones Lib., Amherst, Mass.