• Preface


• Introduction: Irving Berlin's Century


• 1. Irving Berlin's Theater


• 2. Legitimate Vaudeville: The Dillingham Shows, 1914-1915


• 3. Berlin's Follies, 1918-1919


• 4. "America's Greatest Show": The Music Box Revues, 1921-1924


• 5. "An Ideal Combination": Berlin, Kaufman, and Hart, 1920s-1930s


• 6. Musical Theater of War: This Is the Army, 1942-1945


• 7. Something for the Girls: Annie Get Your Gun, 1945-Present


• 8. State of the Union: Berlin, Lindsay and Crouse, 1950-1962


• Conclusion: "This Is America"


• Bibliography

Jeffrey Magee is Associate Professor of Music and Theater at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and author of The Uncrowned King of Swing, winner of the Irving Lowens Award from the Society for American Music.

Irving Berlin's songs have been the soundtrack of America for a century, but his most profound contribution to the nation is to Broadway. Award-winning music historian Jeffrey Magee's chronicle of Berlin's theatrical career is the first book to fully consider the songwriter's immeasurable influence on the Great White Way. Tracing Berlin's humble beginnings on the lower-east side to his rise to American icon, Irving Berlin's American Musical Theatre will delight theater aficionados as well as students of music and popular culture, and anyone interested in the story of a man whose life and work expressed so well the American dream.