It seemed like a good idea: a sexed-up, fictionalized autobiography of Laura Bush. For eight years the First Lady has been the "silent partner" in a White House that can boast that it changed the course of history. Her status as a librarian, literacy advocate, and David McCullough's #1 fan is something neither Red nor Blue State readers can find fault with. Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife is enjoying the publicity and bestseller status (#3 on The New York Times Fiction List for the week of September 21) not many new historical novels receive, but the book makes for unsatisfying, untitillating reading. This has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with structure.

Ms. Sittenfeld is a better writer than American Wife implies. Her debut novel Prep (also a first-person narrative) featured another less-than-perfect heroine, but Lee and the suffocating world she describes was complete. Here, the temptation to re-cast Laura and George as Alice and Charlie Blackwell doesn't go far enough. Implying would have been better than redressing. While facts are intact (a fatal car accident, whirlwind courtship, alcoholism cured by religion, campaigns on the local, state, and federal level, the administration's disastrous policies), the variations on these themes are thin. Some might find the insertion of Cindy Sheehan's plight offensive.

Another weakness in this almost-parallel political universe is its incredulous lack of social history. This 21st century American Wife has more in common with one in a 1950's Douglas Sirk weepie. Adding to the frustration is the leaden, smug dialogue straight out of a book and/or movie sequel where ideas have run their course ond the creator doesn't care as long as the money keeps coming in.

The rowdy Blackwell clan is the only aspect of American Wife that satisfies; they certainly liven up the 500+ pages. Perhaps the Blackwell's crudeness and hypocritical family values are the satire Ms. Sittenfeld was striving for. It's hard to tell, because middle-class Alice's response to marrying the brood's wastrel is whining, a bad enough trait in the real adult world. A reader looking for a creative reaction to the Bush Presidency - or simply a good read - will tire of her nagging narration by the time Alice Blackwell gets to the White House.

Recounting the accomplishments of director Elia “Gage” Kazan (1909-2003) is daunting. His career is a humanities class in twentieth century American culture: membership as actor/director in the influential Group Theatre (where Method Acting had its fractious origins); receiving Academy Awards for directing “Best Picture” winners “Gentleman’s Agreement” (1947) and “On the Waterfront” (1954) ; providing Marlon Brando, James Dean, Andy Griffith, and Warren Beatty with their big breaks; coaxing career-defining performances from Anthony Quinn, Natalie Wood, and Raymond Massey, giving Leonard Bernstein the opportunity to write his only film score, and what has to be one of the most distinguished resume listings of all time – directing the stage premieres of “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1947) and “Death of A Salesman” (1949).

However, Elia Kazan’s life is also a history lesson that neither this book nor any other can answer. In 1952 the director “named names” for the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Gage was far from only “friendly witness” who did, but his lifelong lack of public contrition for doing so made him a pariah. Kazan never received the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award (no doubt Tom Cruise and Brangelina one day will) and his Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement was bestowed towards the end of his life. It is this 1999 Oscar ceremony that frames Richard Schickel’s “Elia Kazan: A Biography.”

Schickel repeatedly drives the point that his book is “critical” biography, and it is. He does a fine job recounting Kazan’s dual Hollywood and Broadway careers and keeping it “A Biography’s” primary focus. The accomplishments of Kazan, his colleagues, and contemporaries make for exciting reading; the results of their work did not just become required reading and/or viewing, but the stuff of legend. The chronological listing “Elia Kazan: A Life in Public” Schickel provides as an Appendix is an excellent resource for both students and enthusiasts.

The chapters leading up to and dealing with Kazan’s HUAC testimony are cross-checked with references and pertinent background information. Among the documents Mr. Schickel quotes from is Kazan’s unapologetic “Statement” published in The New York Times after his HUAC appearance. It can be interpreted that while being a “friendly witness” caused professional unease, it was this ad that made him a polarizing figure in both left and right-wing Hollywood circles. There is little subtext on Schickel’s part that two of Kazan’s masterpieces, “On the Waterfront” and “A Face in the Crowd” (1957), were made after he appeared in front of HUAC. The great irony is that both films deal with falsehood.

Where “Elia Kazan: A Biography” falls short has nothing to do with politics but with the author’s intrusive personal comments. Richard Schickel is Time Magazine’s usually even-handed film critic and an outstanding film historian, but in “A Biography” he is occasionally too protective of his subject. Statements such as Jessica Tandy not deserving to play Blanche onscreen (she created the role on Broadway) or dismissing the various incarnations of Lincoln Center Theatre because they dismissed Kazan are undeveloped and unconvincing.

One of Gage’s frequent collaborators gets the brunt of Mr. Schickel’s abuse. “A Biography” should have been subtitled “I Hate Arthur Miller.” The author cannot forgive the playwright for not “naming names,” claiming “On the Waterfront” was his idea, or for his “Marilyn Monroe” play “After the Fall,” the last major play Kazan directed in 1964. (What is truly unforgivable was the Roundabout Theatre’s 2004 production of the play, which relied on a gorgeous set design rather than hiring a leading man who could say his lines with conviction or feeling. “After the Fall” is flawed but not undoable. Like Miller’s “The Crucible” and “A View from the Bridge,” it might make a good opera.) “After the Fall” not only caused problems for Kazan but for Miller as well – it was only towards the end of his life that Miller’s plays written after 1964 were fairly re-assessed.

Another writer Schickel goes after is Archibald MacLeish; Kazan directed his 1958 Pulitzer-Prize winning play “J.B.” Schickel’s unspoken problem with the poet/playwright seems to be that for many years he was, after Hemingway, the most publicly lauded (he was Librarian of Congress) member of “The Lost Generation.” In dismissing “J.B.,” Mr. Schickel may succeed in making readers curious about it – especially since nothing quite like it is currently produced on commercialized, tourist-hungry Broadway.

The Iraq War…The War on Terror…The Surge…for every name, year passing in labyrinthine complexity, convoluted explanations offered on the campaign trial justifying one vote for war, and opinions from all sides, thousands of American soldiers are stationed the Middle East. Elizabeth D. Samet introduces several of them in Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature in Peace and War at West Point. Unlike President Bush with his cumulative “C” average from Yale, these rigorously educated members at the top echelon of the all-volunteer army know that good command and orders saves lives. They also know books matter.

An Ivy League-educated civilian who has taught at the USMA since 1997, Professor Samet’s memoir grew out of articles, interviews, and talks she’s done since her colleagues and ex-students were deployed. One of the best reasons for reading Soldier’s Heart is discovering that military maneuvers are far from the only thing taught at West Point. English is a required subject, and cadets have the option of minoring in it as well. Lit and composition classes serve another purpose: they are one of the few outlets this particular student body has for expressing his or her own opinions. Samet convincingly argues that future officers need both a communal, disciplined environment and the ability to think creatively for themselves so they and their unit come home alive.

Another reason why Soldier’s Heart is compelling reading is that its author does not consider herself an expert in military life. However, her descriptions of the monuments and rituals of her workplace are vivid. You’ll think again if you thought being stuck in traffic or on the subway was a good enough reason for being late for class.

Professor Samet refers to two nineteenth century works in order to better understand the orderly environment she teaches in and the current crisis affecting all within their picturesque Hudson Valley grounds. The first is the book that her peaked interest in West Point – Ulysses S. Grant’s Personal Memoirs. This presidential autobiography is renowned for its candor, especially those sections where Grant recalls his difficult years at “The Point.” The other is War and Peace, which one young captain brought with him to Iraq. Like Tolstoy’s deftly shifting focus between the nobility on the home front and their sons off fighting Napoleon, Samet divides Soldier’s Heart between the pre- and post-September 11 West Point. Perhaps the victorious General of the Union Army and literature’s most famous soldier-turned-author aren’t surprising choices (neither are Homer, Ambrose Bierce, nor World War I battlefield poet Wilfred Owen), but their timelessness takes on poignant importance.

Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature in Peace and War at West Point is a timely dual history/biography of West Point.

The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interviews.By James Reston, Jr.Harmony Books (2007) Overall Rating: 85 Plot: 100

Character Development: 85

Style: 80

Pacing: 90

Along With: 

Frost/Nixon

By Peter Morgan

Faber and Faber Plays (2007) 

Overall Rating: 100

Plot: 100Character Development: 100

Style: 100

Pacing: 100

 Lost in the accolades for the recent Broadway production of Peter Morgan’s Frost/Nixon was the script itself.  The attention was justifiably on Michael Sheen’s dead-on portrayal of the playboy talk-show host seriously underestimated by his subject and the journalism establishment, and Frank Langella’s indelible, non-caricature character study of Richard Nixon.  There is something to be said about a disgraced president who was the inspiration for an opera masterpiece (John Adams’ Nixon in China), a classic Star Trek line (Mr. Spock convinces Captain Kirk in The Undiscovered Country to negotiate with the Kligons by reminding him that “only Nixon could go to China”), and a very good actor becoming a great one.

However, the acting challenges for Sheen and Langella would have never been there without malleable dialogue.  The first time I saw Frost/Nixon in May 2007 it was a dark depiction of a self-loathing man keen enough to know that, “I brought myself down.”  Two months later I went back to see Frost/Nixon and with nothing changed – except for Mr. Langella winning a Tony Award –, the play was a humorous observation of two male egos vying for attention.  I can’t help but wonder if the Frost/Nixon creative team watched one of Nixon’s well-documented attempts at macho lightheartedness: the formal, antiseptic Nixon-Bob Hope hosted “welcome home” dinner for former Vietnam Prisoners of War from Peter Davis’ Hearts and Minds (1974).

The Broadway footlights blinded two other major characters.  The first was the large television screen looming over the multi-purpose set.  Sound bites and video were successfully incorporated into two other recent British imports, Alan Bennett’s Tony Award-winning The History Boys and David Hare’s Stuff Happens, but here television became The Historian.  The climax of Frost/Nixon occurred when the ex-president’s face was frozen onscreen in extreme close-up after Frost’s questions regarding the then-unreported transcript of a June 20, 1972 conversation between Nixon and chief counsel Charles Colson exposing the President’s full knowledge of the Watergate break-in long before originally admitting to it.  As in the original 1977 broadcast, this highly theatrical moment was far more damning than Nixon’s lack of contrition or Sir David Frost.           

The other character was James Reston, Jr., a historian and college professor with a specialty in Nixon-era politics.  From 1976-1977 he was one of Frost’s advisors for the project.  (Not mentioned in Frost/Nixon and only touched upon by Reston in far too few anecdotes in his memoir is that his father James Sr. was a longtime New York Times editor/columnist who made Nixon’s Enemies List.)  Reston, the author of 13 books, started and then set aside his memoir chronicling his substantial contribution to the interviews.  The 30-year old manuscript he lent to Peter Morgan for Frost/Nixon has now been published as The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interviews.  In his Foreword, Reston remembered the interviews as having “the elements of Greek theatre,” and goes as far as nicknaming Nixon “Proteus” after Neptune’s sneaky shape-shifting son.  Morgan went one better and made Reston Frost/Nixon’s one-man Greek chorus.           

The slender 207-page (compared to Nixon’s own 1120-page RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon) personal history is something of a companion piece to the play and planned film adaptation.  (Ron Howard’s film version of Frost/Nixon, starring both Langella and Sheen, is scheduled for a September 2008 release.  Another upcoming book is the re-titled, re-release of David Frost’s Frost/Nixon: Behind the Scenes of the Nixon Interviews, which is scheduled for publication in September 2007.)  This is not entirely a bad thing.  Reston was there as both a witness and participant, which are the primary functions of a Greek chorus.It is timely that The Conviction of Richard Nixon was published during Frost/Nixon’s limited Broadway run.  This intelligent play and its subject are compelling enough to Google or watch the real thing on DVD.  However, the exclusion of a Bibliography and Index make the book appear a rush job.  Additionally, it would have been both valuable and fascinating learning more about Reston’s own research team that he put together for the interviews.  Nixon and Jefferson biographer Fawn Brodie is the only one he regularly referred to.

What The Conviction of Richard Nixon does best is clear up the literary liberties Frost/Nixon took with the real interviews.  This is a bit volatile because Morgan’s 80-minute, one-act play occasionally accelerates or re-imagines events for dramatic purposes.  Despite that, Frost/Nixon is not revisionist history.  If anything, it is a story of two men who want to regain control of their fate and the spotlight.  Still, it is disappointing learning that the unforgettable late night phone call between the drunken, verbally abusive ex-President and the surprised yet nonplused interviewer never happened.  Less disheartening is learning that it was no last-minute ruse when Frost finally broke through Nixon’s carefully constructed and embittered façade.  The Nixon/Colson transcript that Reston found in the public records at Washington’s Federal Court House (and included in his memoir as The Appendix) was kept secret for eight months because...Nixon’s cronies were keeping tabs on Frost and his team. The reader has no problem feeling or understanding Reston’s ire towards Nixon or the members of his inner circle that saw limited or no jail time.  Nixon’s incredulous description of himself as “the last casualty of Vietnam” gets a detailed rebuttal that goes beyond head shaking and Mr. Langella’s cadenced delivery of that line.  Following their separate meetings with Reston, Charles Colson and John Dean come across as middle-aged frat boys who got away with a “third rate burglary,” making their redemption – Colson’s through religion, Dean’s as the Watergate hearings’ most forthcoming witness – hypocritical.

Yet even with the President Ford’s pardon of Nixon, are these interviews really the trial Reston labeled them?  The pardon made justice impossible, but the scandal that is now a matter of public record – the latest batch of taped conversations released in mid-July 2007 of the newly re-elected Nixon still obsessing over George McGovern in un-presidential, uncivilized language – speaks for itself.  Thus, the value of both Frost/Nixon and The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interviews is they encourage the respective audiences to find out more, and in the public service Frost and his team accomplished by getting Nixon to admit that “I impeached myself” – the only time he publicly expressed regret and/or remorse over Watergate.

Neither Peter Morgan nor James Reston, Jr. had to beat readers over the head with the legacy of the Frost/Nixon interviews.  While it took $1 million of most of his own money going to Richard Nixon make it happen, David Frost wanted nothing more than to beat 60 Minutes at its own game.  And he did.  Too bad the impact of the interviews corroded over three decades into self-serving, poorly researched celebrity-styled journalism.  An exasperating example of this took place in September 2006 when Katie Couric included pictures of baby Suri Cruise on her inaugural C.B.S. newscast.  Another less serious instance was that the big entertainment news the June weekend of this year’s Tony Award ceremony was Paris Hilton’s jail time.  Sir David Frost himself eventually went back to the lightweight interviewing and projects that made him rich and famous.           

There is enough material on Richard Nixon and Watergate to fill several presidential libraries and rows of public library and bookstore shelves.  As Peter Morgan’s play proved, this historic figure continues to be the source of endless speculation and creative inspiration.  One good reason why is found in a Nixon quote incorporated into Frost/Nixon script that says volumes: “If the President does it that means it’s not illegal.”

The least complicated description of Junichirō Tanizaki‘s The Makioka Sisters is that it is an old-fashioned twentieth century saga.  Unlike other epics chronicling a family through social, economic, and political upheaval, this one follows its heroines through changes in the seasons.  Tanizaki’s deceivingly delicate approach is as tightly woven as silk.

The adult Makioka sisters of Osaka, four daughters of a long-deceased prosperous merchant, form the strongest thread.  Tanizaki gives these women distinct personalities making them neither all good nor all bad: just human.  Tsuruko, the stereotyped bossy oldest sibling, finds her soul when she, her pussy-whipped husband Tatsuo, and six children relocate to Tokyo.  Next is Sachiko, the harried one balancing her sisters’ needs with those of her adoring husband Teinosuke and her precocious, chronically insomniac daughter Etsuko.  Then there is the unmarried family beauty Yukiko, who suffers from painful shyness and untreated depression.  The youngest (“Koi-san”) is Takeo.  Koi-san is the most outwardly interesting, outgoing, accomplished, “modern,” and truly troubled because tradition dictates that she cannot marry until Yukiko does.

That the sisters are followed from 1938 to 1941 is another strand binding the story together.  Yet they and their German and Russian friends are oblivious to the sweeping changes taking place outside their well-ordered homes.  Though Tanizaki wrote The Makioka Sisters between 1943 and 1948, he chose not put awkward words in his characters’ mouths explaining the rise of Japanese militarism or interrupt the narrative with historic facts.  Instead, the future for this family and their country is foretold in violent weather such as a typhoon and flood.

There is also a symbolic worm feeding on the book’s pages.  Physical ailments of both major and minor characters are chronicled like reports in a medical journal.  This minutely graphic information is how Tanizaki conveys that these women have nothing better to do than obsessing over and anticipating the worst – and that the Japanese society they are living in is just as lethargic as they are.  He may have history and western psychiatry on his side, but seclusion makes for provoking reading material.

However, the final touch on the novel’s silkscreen is Japanese culture itself.  Tanizaki explains customs and rituals with such great care that readers previously unfamiliar with kabuki, calligraphy, or tea ceremony will come away from The Makioka Sisters appreciating why these things are central to the sisters’ lives.  Though mentioned briefly in a subplot, outsiders may better come to understand the role that the geisha played in pre-World War II society.

The unbroken culture thread makes sense because Tanizaki translated Lady Muraski’s eleventh century novel The Tale of Genji into modern Japanese.  (Edward Seidenstiker, who made the first complete English translation of Genji, is also the translator of the Everyman’s Library edition of The Makioka Sisters.)  Genji is openly evoked once when Sachiko, Teinosuke, and Etsuko exchange poems.  The cultural practice Makioka Sisters is centered around is the mia, or marriage negotiation that includes a background check that MI6 would envy.  Whatever is else going on in the outside world, the genteel Makioka clan’s primary objective is finding a husband for Yukiko.  This bittersweet quest leads to the family’s social and moral decline.  As with the sisters’ silence regarding the impending Second World War, Tanizaki never passes judgment on their actions.  However, he waits until the strange, satisfying, and offbeat conclusion to show the sisters up close how other Japanese, particularly women, regard them.

The Makioka Sisters is like looking at an allegorical silk tapestry.  Beautiful ladies are festively dressed and surrounded by their children, husbands, pets, and loyal servants.  Everyone depicted is looking at cherry blossoms, having tea, dancing, or staring at Mount Fuji.  They are colorful, comforting scenes to be repeated again and again but are nonetheless isolating and sad.

The least complicated description of Junichirō Tanizaki‘s The Makioka Sisters is that it is an old-fashioned twentieth century saga.  Unlike other epics chronicling a family through social, economic, and political upheaval, this one follows its heroines through changes in the seasons.  Tanizaki’s deceivingly delicate approach is as tightly woven as silk.

The adult Makioka sisters of Osaka, four daughters of a long-deceased prosperous merchant, form the strongest thread.  Tanizaki gives these women distinct personalities making them neither all good nor all bad: just human.  Tsuruko, the stereotyped bossy oldest sibling, finds her soul when she, her pussy-whipped husband Tatsuo, and six children relocate to Tokyo.  Next is Sachiko, the harried one balancing her sisters’ needs with those of her adoring husband Teinosuke and her precocious, chronically insomniac daughter Etsuko.  Then there is the unmarried family beauty Yukiko, who suffers from painful shyness and untreated depression.  The youngest (“Koi-san”) is Takeo.  Koi-san is the most outwardly interesting, outgoing, accomplished, “modern,” and truly troubled because tradition dictates that she cannot marry until Yukiko does.

That the sisters are followed from 1938 to 1941 is another strand binding the story together.  Yet they and their German and Russian friends are oblivious to the sweeping changes taking place outside their well-ordered homes.  Though Tanizaki wrote The Makioka Sisters between 1943 and 1948, he chose not put awkward words in his characters’ mouths explaining the rise of Japanese militarism or interrupt the narrative with historic facts.  Instead, the future for this family and their country is foretold in violent weather such as a typhoon and flood.

There is also a symbolic worm feeding on the book’s pages.  Physical ailments of both major and minor characters are chronicled like reports in a medical journal.  This minutely graphic information is how Tanizaki conveys that these women have nothing better to do than obsessing over and anticipating the worst – and that the Japanese society they are living in is just as lethargic as they are.  He may have history and western psychiatry on his side, but seclusion makes for provoking reading material.

However, the final touch on the novel’s silkscreen is Japanese culture itself.  Tanizaki explains customs and rituals with such great care that readers previously unfamiliar with kabuki, calligraphy, or tea ceremony will come away from The Makioka Sisters appreciating why these things are central to the sisters’ lives.  Though mentioned briefly in a subplot, outsiders may better come to understand the role that the geisha played in pre-World War II society.

The unbroken culture thread makes sense because Tanizaki translated Lady Muraski’s eleventh century novel The Tale of Genji into modern Japanese.  (Edward Seidenstiker, who made the first complete English translation of Genji, is also the translator of the Everyman’s Library edition of The Makioka Sisters.)  Genji is openly evoked once when Sachiko, Teinosuke, and Etsuko exchange poems.  The cultural practice Makioka Sisters is centered around is the mia, or marriage negotiation that includes a background check that MI6 would envy.  Whatever is else going on in the outside world, the genteel Makioka clan’s primary objective is finding a husband for Yukiko.  This bittersweet quest leads to the family’s social and moral decline.  As with the sisters’ silence regarding the impending Second World War, Tanizaki never passes judgment on their actions.  However, he waits until the strange, satisfying, and offbeat conclusion to show the sisters up close how other Japanese, particularly women, regard them.

The Makioka Sisters is like looking at an allegorical silk tapestry.  Beautiful ladies are festively dressed and surrounded by their children, husbands, pets, and loyal servants.  Everyone depicted is looking at cherry blossoms, having tea, dancing, or staring at Mount Fuji.  They are colorful, comforting scenes to be repeated again and again but are nonetheless isolating and sad.

The title of Alex Ross’ The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century is a play on Hamlet’s last words. “Rest” for the Prince of Denmark was “silence.” However, Shakespeare doesn’t suffer from the image problem modern “classical” music does. The Bard’s plays can be transferred into contemporary settings, but this music is marginalized primarily because it is less than two centuries old. Beethoven was the ultimate head banger, but that didn’t prevent his music from being performed during his lifetime. What Mr. Ross does in his comprehensive, accessible, and entertaining book is prove that despite being ignored by music directors and arts administrators preoccupied with their subscriber base rather than programming, socialite board members maintaining the status quo, and the mainstream media – this music is very relevant.

It is worth mentioning what The Rest is Noise never attempts being. This is not a BS “cult of the personality” biography or history written by a so-called expert that does nothing but add classical music’s reputation for elitism and freakishness. As in his reviews and blog, The New Yorker’s chief music critic never lectures on or dumbs down his subject. Mr. Ross doesn’t suggest how or what to listen for in Jean Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony or Alban Berg’s opera Lulu. He writes for familiar, novice, and potential listeners. The omission of a discography deserves a standing ovation because it gives readers total freedom locating or downloading performances. While the New York Philharmonic is chastised for its treatment of their celebrated triumvirate of composer/conductor music directors Gustav Mahler, Leonard Bernstein, and Pierre Boulez, major cultural institutions are never condemned outright. In no way is The Rest is Noise a Music Appreciation 101 or Classical Music for Dummies primer.

So rather than going for the expected, Mr. Ross explains how modern classical music (dating from Richard Wagner’s operas written in the 1860’s) is an integral part of western culture. He doesn’t make this sentence sound as pretentious as it reads because history is on the music’s side. Even when this music is noisy like that of Charles Ives, it is worth knowing because it captures time in sound. What makes The Rest is Noise stand out among other classical music studies is Mr. Ross’ sharp analyses of how the outside world influences a composer’s inner life.

The book begins with the scandalous 1905 premiere of Richard Strauss’ operatic adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Salome and ends with an appreciation of John Adams’ 1987 Nixon in China (which the Metropolitan Opera is finally scheduling during its 2010-2011 season). Mr. Ross goes on to present other examples of hard-won twentieth century creativity. The better-known ones make for interesting reading: Igor Stravinsky, whose 1913 Rite of Spring foreshadows World War I, lived his long life in Europe and the United States and formed a prolific collaboration with another Russian èmirgè, choreographer George Balanchine. Dmitri Shostakovich wrote the autobiography the KGB never decoded in his Fourth Symphony and string quartets. Despite his limited access to the west, Shostakovich became great friends with the reticent Sir Benjamin Britten; Mr. Ross points out surprising similarities in their diverse styles. War wasn’t only the form of displacement: Aaron Copland, best known for the Fanfare for the Common Man, fell out of favor with critics and audiences alike when he experimented with the 12-tone music scale created by Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg fled Austria the Nazis to teach and compose in California where he lived not far from his rival…Igor Stravinsky, who too experimented with the 12-tone scale.

Thus, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century makes a strong case that classical music continues thriving in its own forms (e.g., opera, symphony, string quartet), in venues of all kinds. This music occassionally fuses with eastern instrumentation and continues influencing jazz, American musical theatre, and film soundtracks (Jonny Greenwood’s score for There Will Be Blood is far from first ignored by Academy Awards). Alex Ross has done a virtuoso job synthesizing material spanning decades, personalities, and location. He has written the ultimate “Program Notes” that deserve to be read rather than left under one’s seat.