A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Yes, I know, that does sound like the dryest name for the most boring play, ever, but I'm not discussing a show, here: this is the (admittedly fairly dry) title of my latest book, which was released by Bloomsbury/Methuen late last week, and which you can link to here and also here. For whatever reason, if you order from Bloomsbury directly (the first link), it's cheaper than if you order from Amazon (the second link).


Just so you don't confuse this particular Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical with any others that happen to be floating around out there, the cover, which I think is very nice, looks like this:

While the books title does sound very clinical and foreboding, I can assure you that this is a fairly breezy treatment, at least by academic standards, and that I wrote it with general audiences in mind. It intends to deliver a history of the Broadway musical that touches at various times on the development of the commercial theater industry, the growth of New York City, and various cultural shifts that take place across the country. I worked hard on it, and hope that the finished product is useful, reasonably entertaining, and that there aren't too many errors in it.

I'll be back to regularly scheduled commentary on theater--both musical and otherwise--once the fall season gets rolling and my semester starts chugging along without the fits and starts typical of the early stretch.