Lady in the Dark: Biography of a Musical. By bruce d. mcclung. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN: 0-19-512021-4. Pp. xxi, 274. $39.95 (cloth).

It has become customary for reviews of books about the American musical theater to note that the number of books published on the subject has risen dramatically in recent years. on the heels of practitioners and aficionados, scholars in American studies, music, and drama departments have belatedly embraced the subject and started to put out books in impressive numbers. A frequently encountered type is the life-and-works approach. The most common type, however, is a chronological survey, starting somewhere in the genre's predawn era, vaguely situated between the Civil War and the Great War, and ending in the present (or at least with living creators of the genre).