The House That George Built

If you’re the kind of person who thinks they don’t write songs like that anymore, here’s a whole book of agreement.  Wilfred Sheed has written a tribute to the (mostly) men who wrote the Great American Songbook, the hit songs of the twenties through the fifties that have endured as standards.  This is an informal, anecdotal account, with stories of all the masters: George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter, and many more.  Sheed knew many of these songwriters and shares his own observations and preferences.  If you’d rather hear “The Way You Look Tonight,” “Night and Day” or “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” than anything you hear on the radio today, this book is for you.