Books by Ethan Mordden and Complete Book Reviews

Ethan Mordden, Author St. Martin's Press $16.95 (308p) ISBN 978-0-312-02201-3
The subtitle of this witty collection of stories, the conclusion of a trilogy begun with I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore and continued in Buddies , is slightly misleading: the ``adventures'' are really no more than a series of parties,...
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Ethan Mordden. Oxford Univ., $29.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-19-939540-8
Mordden (On Sondheim: An Opinionated Guide), a noted authority on the American musical, explores the melding of Broadway and Hollywood in this informative and enlightening survey. Mordden is quick to clarify that his main focus is on Broadway-identif
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Ethan Mordden. St. Martin’s, $29.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-312-67657-5
One of the 20th-century’s greatest composers, Weill, a Jewish cantor’s son in Germany, whose only interest was music and who wrote an adaptation of a Rilke poem when he was 19, changed when he met the attractive and pleasing daughter of a Viennese...
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Ethan Mordden. St. Martin's, $29.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-312-54024-1
Mordden, a novelist and historian of the Broadway musical, details how Manhattan taught America's often skeptical Main Street to be stylish and sophisticated. This crisp and cheeky analysis of the country's First City from the 1920s through the...
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Ethan Mordden, Author Oxford University Press, USA $30 (272p) ISBN 978-0-19-511710-3
In his celebration of the glorious (and not-so glorious) musicals of the 1950s, Mordden (Broadway Babies and Make Believe: The Broadway Musical in the 1920's) relates one of Broadway's hoary old jokes: ""If God had really wanted to punish Hitler, He'
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Ethan Mordden, Author St. Martin's Press $23.95 (354p) ISBN 978-0-312-15660-2
Combining literary wit with vivid characters, Mordden adds a long-awaited fourth tale to the three-volume Buddies cycle he spun in the 1980s (I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore, 1985, etc.). Set in New York City, this loosely structured...
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Ethan Mordden, Author Villard Books $25 (590p) ISBN 978-0-679-41529-9
According to Mordden's (I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore) sweeping panorama of gay life in the United States, ``the history meter is ticking''--and what a resonant sound it makes throughout these masterfully crafted pages. Beginning in L.A.
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Ethan Mordden, Author Alfred A. Knopf $24.95 (301p) ISBN 978-0-394-57157-7
Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) intimated that there's no safe place--the murderously bizarre can crop up anywhere. John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969) portrays an America where ``television and radio beam messages at you like mind-control...
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Ethan Mordden, Author . St. Martin's/Palgrave $26.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-312-23952-7
The prolific Mordden (The Fireside Companion to the Theatre) has juggled two different series in recent years, one fiction and one nonfiction. Now he offers the fourth title in the latter, a decade-by-decade history of American musicals, following...
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Ethan Mordden, Author Knopf Publishing Group $24.95 (387p) ISBN 978-0-394-55404-4
The studio system in Hollywood was doomed once the Supreme Court decided in 1948 that the same companies that created movies could not legally control their exhibition, forcing studios to divest their theater chains. That decision inaugurated a...
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Ethan Mordden, Author St. Martin's Press $16.95 (240p) ISBN 978-0-312-10686-7
Homosexuality is a sexual inclination, but being gay, observes Mordden in his third fictional work (after One Last Waltz, is about joining a city culture. One's lover is also one's buddy, which he says gives gays one up on straights. Mordden writes...
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Ethan Mordden, Author Oxford University Press, USA $30 (272p) ISBN 978-0-19-510594-0
The 1920s was the decade that transformed the American musical from a string of generic formula tunes and specialty acts into a cohesive play that advanced plot and expressed characterization through individualized and dramatic songs. So claims...
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Ethan Mordden, Author Palgrave MacMillan $26.95 (270p) ISBN 978-0-312-23951-0
The Great Depression not only stifled the U.S. economy, it slowed down the innovation of the Broadway musical. Despite that, and despite the fact that this era left behind few remnants for future generations, master theater historian Mordden cobbles
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Ethan Mordden, Author Palgrave MacMillan $30 (312p) ISBN 978-0-312-23954-1
In his six previous books (One More Kiss: The Broadway Musical in the 1970s, etc.), Mordden chronicled the ""Golden Age"" of musical theater, which for him is the period between 1920 and 1970. This scattered but stinging critique focuses on modern...
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Ethan Mordden, Author Oxford University Press $55 (288p) ISBN 978-0-19-512851-2
Once again establishing that he is as impressive a nonfiction writer as he is a novelist (How Long Has This Been Going On?; Buddies), Mordden analyzes the many notable hits (and egregious flops) of the 1940s, and describes how they figured into--and
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Ethan Mordden, Author . St. Martin's $26.95 (340p) ISBN 978-0-312-33898-5
Acclaimed for his sprightly histories of the Broadway musical, the author turns to nonmusical theater in this scintillating survey. Mordden considers New York theater the wellspring of mid-century American culture, especially during the 1930s, when...
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Ethan Mordden, Author, Martin Gottfried, Author ABRAMS $49.5 (0p) ISBN 978-0-8109-1567-1
Beginning with the 1943 premiere of Oklahoma! , the collaboration of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II--the former's music, the latter's lyrics--epitomized the Broadway musical for nearly two decades. In this handsome book, New Yorker writer...
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