This was an excellent (and very thorough) look into the lives of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II and their remarkable contributions to musical theater. The author, Todd Purdom, known for his political reporting at the New York Times, Politico and Vanity Fair, is obviously someone who loves Broadway and the musical theater. The book does feel like a labor of love, but because Purdom is such a fine journalist, it is also very balanced and we get deep insights into these men and their working relationship, warts and all.
Purdom has organized and annotated the material well. He takes us through his subjects' individual histories and then brings us to their partnership, and completes the picture with an account of Rodgers's life and work after Hammerstein's early death.
The book is lively and full of anecdotes about the men themselves and others, including Agnes de Mille, Stephen Sondheim, Mary Martin, Julie Andrews, Irving Berlin, Joshua Logan, Gene Kelly and many more. It is a great read, but never descends into gossip.
If you are a devotee of the Broadway theater, you will love this book. Some of the territory has been covered in other biographical books about theater figures, but this is probably one of the best and most professionally written Broadway-oriented books you are likely to encounter.
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