Ethan Mordden: 23 books
On Sondheim
An Opinionated Guide
Language: English
Release Date: November 19, 2015
In On Sondheim, renowned author Ethan Mordden takes the reader on a tour of Stephen Sondheim's work, arguing for the importance and appeal of the composer-lyricist in American theater and, even more, in American culture. Over the course of eighteen shows, Mordden demonstrates that Sondheim is a classical...
How's Your Romance?
Concluding the "Buddies" Cycle
Language: English
Release Date: October 8, 2013
Mordden explores a tricky moral universe in which emotional loyalty is exalted but sexual fidelity is not assumed...There is a sense of real pain amid the zingers; Mordden's characters run their mouths to avoid baring their souls." -- New York Times Book Review on Some Men Are Lookers
After...
Some Men Are Lookers
A Continuation of the "Buddies" Cycle
Language: English
Release Date: May 15, 1997
Some Men Are Lookers, Ethan Mordden's much lauded fourth volume in his "Buddies" cycle, follows the exploits of his best-loved characters-Dennis Savage, Little Kiwi, Carlo, the 'elf-child' Cosgrove, and narrator Bud. Mordden lays bare the emotional landscape of the city within a city that...
by Ethan Mordden
Language: English
Release Date: January 21, 2013
Language: English
Release Date: January 21, 2013
“Ethan Mordden is a master craftsman. His style combines the satirical urbanity of Juvenal, the wit of Oscar Wilde, the intelligence and drawing-room sophistication of Jane Austen.” —Bay Windows
In this new collection of fiction, a porn star turns up pouring cocktails in a small town's...
Anything Goes
A History of American Musical Theatre
Language: English
Release Date: August 8, 2013
Ethan Mordden has been hailed as "a sharp-eared listener and a discerning critic," by Opera News, which compares his books to "dinner with a knowledgeable, garrulous companion." The "preeminent historian of the American musical" (New York Times), he "brings boundless...
The Happiest Corpse I've Ever Seen
The Last Twenty-Five Years of the Broadway Musical
Language: English
Release Date: April 7, 2015
For Ethan Mordden, the closing night of the hit musical, 42nd St. sounded the death knell of the art form of the Broadway musical. After that, big orchestras, real voices, recognizable books and intelligent lyrics went out the window in favor of cats, helicopters, yodeling Frenchmen, and the roof...
Sing for Your Supper
The Broadway Musical in the 1930s
Language: English
Release Date: April 7, 2015
In the 1930s, Broadway's lights still burned brightly. Ethan Mordden completes his history of the Broadway musical by taking a look at this forgotten era. Shows like Anything Goes brought the glitter of Cole Porter and Merman's brass to the public. Innovations in dance were pioneered by Balanchine...
One More Kiss
The Broadway Musical in the 1970s
Language: English
Release Date: November 10, 2015
Ethan Mordden's new entry in his history of the Broadway musical looks at an era that brought us not only the gritty reality of "A Chorus Line" and the brilliantly bittersweet works of Stephen Sondheim, but also the nostalgic crowd-pleasers "No, No, Nanette" and "Annie."...
by Ethan Mordden
Language: English
Release Date: January 2, 2013
Language: English
Release Date: January 2, 2013
Hollywood in the years between 1929 and 1948 was a town of moviemaking empires. The great studios were estates of talent: sprawling, dense, diverse. It was the Golden Age of the Movies, and each studio made its distinctive contribution. But how did the studios, "growing up" in the same time...
Buddies
A Continuation of the "Buddies" Cycle
Language: English
Release Date: June 2, 2015
"What unites us, all of us, surely is brotherhood, a sense that our friendships are historic, designed to hold Stonewall together," muses on character in Ethan Mordden's Buddies. This need for friendship, for nonerotic affection, for buddies, shines forth as an American obsession from Moby-Dick...
I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore
The "Buddies" Cycle
Language: English
Release Date: June 2, 2015
"We have traded tales, my buddies and I; of affairs, encounters, secrets, fears, self-promotion-of fantasies that we make real in the telling."
In this, the first volume in Ethan Mordden's acclaimed trilogy on Manhattan gay life, he introduces a small group of friends-Dennis Savage,...
Ziegfeld
The Man Who Invented Show Business
Language: English
Release Date: November 11, 2008
Any girl who twists her hat will be fired! – Florenz Ziegfeld
And no Ziegfeld girl ever did as she made her way down the gala stairways of the Ziegfeld Follies in some of the most astonishing spectacles the American theatergoing public ever witnessed. When Florenz Ziegfeld started in theater,...
Open a New Window
The Broadway Musical in the 1960s
Language: English
Release Date: April 7, 2015
In the 1960s, the Broadway musical was revolutionized from an entertainment characterized by sentimental standards, such as Camelot and Hello, Dolly!, to one of brilliant and bittersweet masterpieces, such as Cabaret and Fiddler on the Roof. In Open a New Window, Ethan Mordden continues his history...
by Ethan Mordden
Language: English
Release Date: November 1, 2016
Language: English
Release Date: November 1, 2016
When films like The Jazz Singer started to integrate synchronized music, in the late 1920s many ambitious songwriting pioneers of the Great White Way - George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and Lorenz Hart, among many others - were enticed westward by Hollywood studios' promises of...
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