- Note to the reader
- Cast of characters
- Oscar Hammerstein II
- Richard Rodgers
- Jerome Kern
- Phyllis McGinley
- Noël Coward
- Lorenz Hart
- Alfred Newman
- Maxwell Anderson
- Truman Capote
- Anthony Burgess
- Langston Hughes
- DuBose Heyward
- Richard Wilbur
- W. H. Auden
- John Kander
- Fred Ebb
- Jerry Bock
- Sheldon Harnick
- Charles Strouse
- Lee Adams
- Irving Berlin
- Ira Gershwin
- Cole Porter
- George Gershwin
- Frank Loesser
- Dorothy Fields
- Leonard Bernstein
- Craig Carnelia
- E. Y. Harburg
- Kurt Weill
- Lionel Bart
- Alan Jay Lerner
- Frederick Loewe
- Leo Robin
- Jule Styne
- Sammy Cahn
- Betty Comden and Adolph Green
- Nacio Herb Brown
- Ray Henderson
- Harold Arlen
- Cy Coleman
- Morton Gould
- Jimmy McHugh
- Anne Caldwell
- Carolyn Leigh
- Sigmund Romberg
- Burton Lane
- Preface
- Introduction
- Rhyme and Its Reasons
- Saturday Night
- West Side Story
- Gypsy
- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
- Anyone Can Whistle
- Do I Hear a Waltz?
- Company
- Follies
- A Little Night Music
- The Frogs
- Pacific Overtures
- Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street
- Merrily We Roll Along
Interspersed with frank, witty, pithy, sometimes almost vicious, portraits of
- Frank Loesser: The idea man
- Alan Jay Lerner: No There There
- Oscar Hammerstein II: Upward Nobility
- E. Y. Harburg: Word Drunk
- Ira Gershwin: Rhyming Poison
- Irving Berlin: Deceptive Simplicity
- Cole Porter: Camp and Dazzle
- Dorothy Fields: Wry and Dry
- Noël Coward: The Master of Blather
- W. A. Gilbert: An Unacquired Taste
And an:
- Appendix: Original Broadway Productions
Topics covered by this book
- Pacific Overtures (drama) • libretto and analysis by Sondheim
- The Frogs (drama) • libretto and analysis by Sondheim
- Saturday Night (drama) • libretto and analysis by Sondheim
- A Little Night Music (drama) • libretto and analysis by Sondheim
- Merrily We Roll Along (drama) • libretto and analysis by Sondheim
- Follies (drama) • libretto and analysis by Sondheim
- Sweeney Todd (drama) • libretto and analysis by Sondheim
- Company (drama) • libretto and analysis by Sondheim
- Do I Hear A Waltz? (drama) • libretto and analysis by Sondheim
- Anyone Can Whistle (drama) • libretto and analysis by Sondheim
- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (drama) • libretto and analysis by Sondheim
- Gypsy (drama) • libretto and analysis by Sondheim
- West Side Story (drama) • libretto and analysis by Sondheim
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