MAKING AMERICANS: Jews and the Broadway Musical
Andrea Most, . . Harvard Univ., $29.95 (253pp) ISBN 978-0-674-01165-6
The Broadway musical is a unique American art form, and many of its creators and most famous practitioners were Jews. Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein and George and Ira Gershwin, among others, defined this illustrious medium. Most, a University of Toronto English professor, reveals how Jewish artists established a new sense of what it means to be Jewish in America and a new understanding of the meaning of America. She shows how one must appreciate the subtext behind classic songs and love stories: the assimilation of outsiders into a community and the utopian dream of America as a liberal meritocracy. Superbly conveying sociopolitical history between 1926 and 1951, Most notes how current events affected the American Jewish psyche. The succinct overview dovetails with her in-depth analysis of seminal classics such as
Reviewed on: 10/20/2003
Genre: Nonfiction