Henry Cowell, Bohemian. By Michael Hicks. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. ISBN 0-252-02751-5 (cloth: alk. paper). Pp. ix, 204. $29.95.

Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s. By Carol J. Oja. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-505849-6 (cloth). Pp. 493. $39.95

Michael Hicks's biography of Henry Cowell and Carol Oja's chronicle of New York's modern music scene in the 1920s fill major gaps in the historical record and attest to the growing vigor of scholarship on American music. Hicks documents Cowell's development from birth to musical maturity and Oja provides the larger context in which Cowell and other American composers came into prominence. Both books are highly readable, populated by colorful personalities, with illuminating references to primary source documents and musical examples.