Richard Taruskin's many books also include The Oxford History of Western Music, and Defining Russia Musically.

"[Taruskin's] command of this subject is surely unparalleled... This is an authoritative, consistently challenging, deeply engaging volume of essays - very strongly recommended." -- Philip Borg-Wheeler Classical Music Magazine "Very entertaining." -- Michael Kimmelman New York Review Of Books "[Taruskin's essays] demonstrate his ... rare gift for conveying complex information in a concise, accessible manner... An essential compendium." Notes "Whether [Taruskin is] validating Susan McClary's sexist charges at Beethoven or implicitly acknowledging his debt to Donald Francis Tovey, reading his essays will make you a better, smarter person." Huffington Post

• preface: against utopia / ix 1. Et in Arcadia Ego; or, I Didn't Know I Was Such a Pessimist until I Wrote This Thing (a talk) / 1 From the New York Times, mostly 2. Only Time Will Cover the Taint / 21 3. "Nationalism": Colonialism in Disguise? / 25 4. Why Do They All Hate Horowitz? / 30 5. Optimism amid the Rubble / 37 6. A Survivor from the Teutonic Train Wreck / 43 7. Does Nature Call the Tune? / 46 8. Two Stabs at the Universe / 51 Away with the Ives Myth: The "Universe" Is Here at Last / 51 Out of Hibernation: Ives's Mythical Beast / 55 9. In Search of the "Good" Hindemith Legacy / 60 10. Six Times Six: A Bach Suite Selection / 66 11. A Beethoven Season? / 71 12. Dispelling the Contagious Wagnerian Mist / 81 13. How Talented Composers Become Useless / 86 14. Making a Stand against Sterility / 94 15. A Sturdy Musical Bridge to the Twenty-first Century / 98 16. Calling All Pundits: No More Predictions! / 104 17. In The Rake's Progress, Love Conquers (Almost) All / 109 18. Markevitch as Icarus / 118 19. Let's Rescue Poor Schumann from His Rescuers / 124 20. Early Music: Truly Old-Fashioned at Last? / 129 21. Bartok and Stravinsky: Odd Couple Reunited? / 133 22. Wagner's Antichrist Crashes a Pagan Party / 138 23. A Surrealist Composer Comes to the Rescue of Modernism / 144 24. Corraling a Herd of Musical Mavericks / 153 25. Can We Give Poor Orff a Pass at Last? / 161 26. The Danger of Music and the Case for Control / 165 27. Ezra Pound: A Slim Sound Claim to Musical Immortality / 181 28. Underneath the Dissonance Beat a Brahmsian Heart / 186 29. Enter Boris Goudenow, Just 295 Years Late / 191 For the New Republic, mostly 30. The First Modernist / 195 31. The Dark Side of the Moon / 202 32. Of Kings and Divas / 217 33. The Golden Age of Kitsch / 241 34. No Ear for Music: The Scary Purity of John Cage / 261 35. Sacred Entertainments / 280 36. The Poietic Fallacy / 301 37. The Musical Mystique: Defending Classical Music against Its Devotees / 330 From the scholarly press 38. Revising Revision / 354 39. Back to Whom? Neoclassicism as Ideology / 382 40. She Do the Ring in Different Voices / 406 41. Stravinsky and Us / 420 Envoi 42. Setting Limits (a talk) / 448 index / 000