text: Ethan Mordden's editors have allowed him to ruin what could possibly have been a good book.  This is the worst of his books on the various decades of the Broadway musical as the faults of the seventies book have widened into gulfs.  His political ramblings (often just slightly right of Ann Coulter and making as much sense) seep through the book, dragging it down.  The French people are slammed a number of times, along with the ACLU, Burt Lancaster (apparently, according to Ethan a good friend of Stalin) and the left in general, while the author defends Bush (and it does take some looking back over the page to figure out how he fits all this into a book on musical theatre).  The author's train of thought wanders like a bitter old man  all over the page in search of a target, any target.  It is often hard to stomach.  The truly sad fact about this is that the author often has quite cogent things to say about a particular musical and when he does stick to that, it can actually make one want to look at the work again.  An editor should have cleaned the work up before before allowing it on stage to greet its public.  The author is capable of better work
  