The Book of Broadway is a celebratory, gorgeous tome dedicated to what is arguably the quintessential American art form: the Broadway show. The book profiles 150 of the best, biggest, most influential, and most fascinating Broadway musicals and plays ever produced, spanning the mid-nineteenth century to the twenty-first century. Shows profiled include everything from the 1860s musical The Black Crook, which captivated and titillated audiences for more than five hours, to the Pulitzer Prize– winning 2010 play Clybourne Park. The men and women who shaped Broadway history - such as Stephen Sondheim, Tennessee Williams, Bernadette Peters, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Ethel Merman, Marlon Brando, August Wilson, and Nathan Lane - are celebrated for their groundbreaking work. Photographs throughout illustrate the stunning designs of the shows profiled.

Author Eric Grode - an arts writer for The New York Times,and author of Hair: The Story of the Show That Defined a Generation - has compiled this ultimate guide to Broadway shows, filled with insider knowledge. Theater fans will appreciate the fantastic Broadway trivia scattered throughout the book as well as the palpable sense of history in this encyclopedic treatment of one of our most beloved pastimes.

A handful of the shows featured in this book include:

Annie

The Book of Mormon

Bye Bye Birdie

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Chicago

Death of a Salesman

Fiddler on the Roof

Grease

Guys and Dolls

Hello, Dolly!

Kiss Me, Kate

Les Miserables

The Music Man

My Fair Lady

The Phantom of the Opera

Rent

Six Degrees of Separation

The Sound of Music

A Streetcar Named Desire

West Side Story