With 827 pages of entries on individual performers, shows, composers, lyricists, directors and choreographers, together with almost another hundred pages of appendices covering the chronology of musicals, guides to recordings and awards, a bibliography and an index, this compilation is an impressive volume to appear under the name of a sole author. Thomas Hischak has already published more than a dozen works on various aspects of the American musical, and the present study is as comprehensive and many-sided as the genre itself.