I'm a sucker for any book about musical theatre, so when I saw there was a new book, dealing specifically with "the Politics of Bursting into Song and Dance" I was seriously interested in reading this.

However, I take issue with any book that reads like a graduate thesis, looking to convince the reader of something, as opposed to a non-fiction book, and this really reads like a thesis paper to me.

We start with an introduction that is at least twice as long as the longest chapter in the book and the first half of it reads like an explorative chapter. So much so that I stopped reading (twice!) and flipped back, certain that I must have skipped over a page indicating the beginning of the chapter. But no, it's just a very long introduction.

When the introduction starts to inform the reader what they will be reading ("The case studies and arguments of chapters 1-4 form the infrastructure for the synoptic account of the genre that I articulate in chapter 5, while chapters 6, 7, and the conclusion explore (mostly recently) responses to the ethical issues that I explore in chapter 5.") It gets quite specific ("The fifth chapter subsumes the concerns of the first four, arguing that a radical aesthetic of disintegration - a distinguished logic of identification, control, and labor - underpins musical theatre and also generates the anxieties that provoke integration.") and I wondered if it would even matter if I read the book itself and not just the introduction.

Author Bradley Rogers is never able to take himself out of the book and instead makes it very clear that he's there, with a goal to convince the reader of his premise or statement.

Through a close reading of Where's Charley?, I will show how the plots of musical comedy explicitly explore both the operation and the stakes of the exotic/erotic dynamic. Having shown how this dynamic structures the plot of Where's Charley?, I then explore how it structures not only the plot of Lady in the Dark but also the scene of its construction and performance.

This becomes a common theme - Rogers letting the reader know that he "would propose that..." or he will "show that..." throughout the book.

How can a book about bursting into song and dance be so dull and lifeless? The answer: When it's written for academia and not the general book buyer/musical theatre lover.

Maybe that's not how or why this book was written, but that's definitely how it presents itself.

There was a moment, near the end, when Rogers wrote one sentence that I found really great and insightful.

"...when we in the audience applaud, it is we who burst into song."

It is unfortunate that I can't sing the praises of this book.

Looking for a good book? The Song is you, by Bradley Rogers, is not recommended unless you really enjoy academic lectures as reading material.

The Song Is You is well-written and researched exploration of musical theater. However, I couldn't get into it at all. I guess the main reason is that I dislike the subject of Rogers's research. Nevertheless, I learned many things about something I don't really know much about or care, for that matter.

You have to really, really, REALLY be interested in the politics of musical theatre to enjoy reading this book. I don't mean a passive interest. It practically has to be all you live and breathe, or you've already read every book on the subject matter and still are not satisfied. This doesn't mean the book is bad, but it is VERY academic. It brought me back to hours and hours of reading journal articles for my degree, articles that are only passively related to my research topic of hand, but that just may on the off chance contain a tiny piece of information that is useful to me. Again, not to say that this book isn't useful, but that it goes far, far deeper into construction and reaction than you ever cared to have even a humble passing interest in. Maybe that should be obvious, considering it's being published by a university press. But let me just state this: if you are looking for a little book about why we as humans love musicals so much and find them a fun way to pass the time, you probably don't need to pick up this book. It's dense, so dense, that even the section on Hamilton (of which I have read nearly every article, review, structural examination that exists on it) feels long and relentless. If it wasn't obvious, I didn't finish the book. If you like My Fair Lady, read the introduction and you'll feel like you've learned something (it took me three tries to get through that film; it took me longer to get through that chapter). If none of these categories apply to you and you DO want a deep, academic delve into theatrical song and dance, this is definitely your kind of book. For the rest of us plebs, I don't think we have the brain capacity. Students of musical theatre history will be using this as a textbook one day.

This was a fascinating book and an exploration of musical theatre songs from the very early period to the present day. I thought the writing style was accessible and the author made the points seem interesting. The book overall filled the history of musical theatre that i needed and the analysis was on point and done so precisely and interestingly.