America's Musical Life strikes a balance in presenting general background and highlighting individual composers performers, and pictures of music. We learn how sacred music-making coexisted with secular song and dance in the colonies how nineteenth-century commerce ruled the publication of parlor music, and how the twentieth century introduced an incredibly rich array of styles encompassing blues jazz sound tracks folk revival, swing, minimalism rock and hip-hop to name just a few as well as the music of Charles Ives, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, and Sarah Vaughan -- the list is endless.

Bringing order to this cacophony, America's Musical Life gives us a highly readable and informative account or this country's rich musical traditions.