Glen's Reviews > How Sondheim Can Change Your Life

I won this book in a goodreads drawing.

This is a book less about Sondheim, and more about how you can learn things from his various musicals. I read a book like this before, title The Mad Morality, about what you can learn from Mad Magazine.

While The Mad Morality was biblically based, even if in a 1960's liberal sort of way, this book is not. This is more based on post-modern morality, and doesn't really have much of a kick.

Out of them all, the one I found most interesting, possibly because I did not share the author's views, was the chapter on the play, Assassins. Perhaps it's because we've recently had two assassination attempts on a presidential candidate, that it seems a little too easy to blame the usual socio-economic factors on everything. I always found the play more than a little ahistorical, shaping history to fit Sondheim's views, but this one carries it even further.

To be honest, I think it shows how the entire genre (medium?) has been captured by the Left, and as result is becoming less and less relevant as an art form to the masses. Too bad.