America’s Songs: 

The Stories Behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley

By Philip Furia and Michael Lasser

Published by Routledge, May 2006
Now available in bookstores and on the web
Hardback list price, $29.95  ISBN # 0415972469

 

“Song,” the book begins, “is the most beloved of the arts.”  And this book is in love with songs – mainly with American songs from the first half of the twentieth century, when our greatest songwriters – from Irving Berlin to George and Ira Gershwin, from Cole Porter to Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein – were at the height of their powers. 

Writing about the greatest songs of the “Golden Age of American Song,” the book shows how they join music and words, sentiment and wit, into a seamless whole. It also traces the unpredictable give-and-take between composer and lyricist that results in a finished song. 

You’ll come closer to knowing why you love your favorite songs, and you’ll see songwriters in a more human light than ever before.

Some readers will want to trace the songs chronologically from cover to cover, from “Some of These Days” in 1910 to “New York, New York” in 1977. Others will take a more spontaneous approach: open to a page and start to read.  One reader emailed: 

 "This is a good book just to pick up, read 20 pages, and come back to it a couple of days later and not miss a beat. You find yourself humming the songs as you’re reading about them."

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