George Gershwin: His Life and Work

The best Gershwin biography I have read. Lots more detailed info than the other ones.Great service from Little Moo's Books. Product ordered Monday evening and arrived Thursday. Definitely recommended.

Exhausting read. Very detailed but the author never really makes Gershwin come to life. This is a real pity.

The ultimate Gershwin biography, massive but so very readable. It's going to keep me enjoyably occupied for months.

We usually apply the term genius to the subject of a biography. With the writing of Howard Pollack, one can also apply that term to the biographer.When I first heard that Pollack was at work on a biography of Gershwin, I was saddened to think that he would be devoting his time to someone who had been the subject of so many biographies. I thought, what else was there to be said about Gershwin, but when I recalled the balanced and thoroughly considered approach he brought to his biography of Copland, I was curious to read what he would write. Not only was I not disappointed, I was overwhelmed.Pollack does not question the actions of his subjects, he reports and tells a story, leaving the reader to make his or her own judgements. There is no attempt to sensationalize anything as he lets the facts speak for themselves. Pollack treats his subjects with the greatest respect without losing sight of their humanity. He brings great dignity to his writing and to his subjects.His use of the language is transparent. You are never slowed down by his words. When he writes about music, Pollack has a remarkable ability to engage both the musician and non-musician alike. As with his volume on Copland, you sense he knows the music so well that he can intuit what the composer intended with each new work. He seeks out so much of the related material one would think he has devoted his entire life to the study of his subjects. You are aware of the detail, but not overwhelmed or encumbered by it.I found the quotes from Michael Feinstein to be very informative. Feinstein, is not only the great exponent of popular music of the tradition of Gershwin, Kern, Berlin, et al; he is also one of the most informed in the music of that period. The time Feinstein spent as Ira Gershwin's assistant lends credibility to his perspective and recollections, and adds great insight to both the humanity and the music of Gershwin.This volume is as close to an encapsulation of Gershwin's life and works as one could hope to find in words.

Very interesting book about a great American talent.

Detailed and lots of first hand facts from those who knew and were close to George and Ira. Fascinating and hard to put down! This book once and for all puts to bed the slanderous lies that George Gerwshwin was not musically educated. The results of his studies with composers in New York and abroad and at Columbia while he was developing his popular style, are demonstrated graphically in the more intellectual musicals and his orchestral pieces, culminating in Porgy and Bess. What a tragedy that he died so very young...PLEASE REMOVE MY NAME FROM REVIEWS. tHANK YOU. NOVAmAN IS FINE

Best bio of Gershwin I have ever read. Basically a chronologic description that connects to almost anyone who had anything to deal or say about GG. Particularly, effective was the musicology about almost the entire body of works.

To read this book is to get a Ph.D. on Gershwin. What I mean by that is the author should be commended for such a definitive and scholarly biography and the reader should be commended for reading it in its entirety.You need a prerequisite before "attending" this book - a familiarity with George Gershwin to begin with. Otherwise, you are likely to get overwhelmed by the details. He lived to be only 38 and this book is 884 pages. (By comparison, Laurence Bergreen's entertaining biography on Irving Berlin - "As Thousands Cheer" -- is 658 pages and he lived to be 101!)The other challenge in reading this book is that, as the author readily admits in the preface, it is not written chronologically for the most part. Each chapter focuses on a different subject - ie "childhood and family, musical education, early relation to popular music, achievement as a pianist..." Lou Cannon wrote his bio on Ronald Reagan this way. The problem with this style is it is very difficult to get a sense of the overall subject's life and how they lived day by day. The narrative becomes disjointed, events in their lives disconnected.The author doubles down on this style by splitting the book into two parts. Part I is the biography, Part II studies the music. So after you read about Gershwin's life, you start all over again and read about the music.As it turns out, the author Howard Pollack is a professor of music and he calls his book "a study."I do not mean to be too critical. It's obviously a monumental work and Gershwin fans are obviously pleased by it. I'm just warning the more casual readers, who enjoy biographies and histories like I do, that it's quite an undertaking if you are not a diehard fan, but certainly worthwhile if you are up for the challenge.