Chosen Voices: The Story of the American Cantorate. By Mark Slobin. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. ISBN 0-252-07089-5 (pbk); ISBN 0-252-01565-7 (cloth, 1989). Pp. xxv + 318. $19.95.

American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots. Edited by Mark Slobin. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. ISBN 0-520-22717-4 (cloth); ISBN 0-520-22718-2 (pbk). $49.95 (cloth), $19.95 (pbk.)

Each immigrant group docking in America's ports brings among its cultural baggage an assortment of seeds of various musical traditions. Planted in the variegated sociological microclimates of the New World, some �ower and proliferate; some hybridize with other varieties; some wither and die. If the musical legacy of Jewish immigrants appears to have �ourished unusually well, it is only in part because of the rich variety of styles but also because that tradition has been so extensively documented, both in recordings and, more recently, in written analysis—a documentation process to which Mark Slobin has contributed immensely in the last two decades.