Includes bibliographical references and index

Light opera: Jacques Offenbach, Johann Strauss II, W.S. Gilbert, Sir Arthur Sullivan, Franz Lehar, Victor Herbert, Rudolf Friml, and Sigmund Romberg page 1-48 - - Popular musical theatre songs of the early 1900s : George M. Cohan, Irving Berlin, and Jerome Kern page 49-64 - - The great songwriters of Tin Pan alley : Hatty Warren, Jimmy McHugh, Buddy DeSylva, Lew Brown, Ray Henderson, George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin, Arthur Schwartz, Howard Dietz, and Harold Arlen page 65-90 - - The great wits and sophisticates : Cole Porter,Richard Rodgers, and Lorenz Hart, E.Y. "Yip" Harburg, Johnny Mercer, Dorothy Fields and Vernon Duke page 91-115 - - The great jazz composers : Eubie Blake, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Hoagy Carmichael, and Fats Waller, and the great jazz singers page 116-135 - - The golden age - the integrated musical: Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, Frank Loesser, Kurt Weill, Burton Lane, Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and Jule Styne page 136-170

The culmination of the golden age of the American musical: Jerry Herman, Charles Striuse, Tom Jones and Harvey Schmids, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, Cy Coleman, and John Kander and Fred Ebb page 171-201 - - Sui generis: Stephen Sondheim page 202-220 - - New sounds-the 1970s: Galt macDermot, Stephen Schwartz, Marvin Hamlisch, Marry Yeston, Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, Richard Maltby Jr and David Shire, and William Finn page 221-246 - - The mega-musical: Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil page 247-268 - - Musicals of the 1990s and 2000s - the new eclecticism: Elton John, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, Ricky Ian Gordon, Frank Wildhorn, Jonhthan Larson, Jason Robert Brown, Jeanine Tesori, Michael John LaChiusa, Andrew Lippa, Adam Guettel and Tom Kitt page 269-304 - - Other popular styles: The jukebox musicals page 305-311