Published alongside The Irving Berlin Reader, edited by Benjamin Sears (2012), Magee's contribution to the Oxford series Broadway Legacies brings Berlin's musical theatre work to the fore, from Watch Your Step (1914) to Berlin's last show, Mr. President (1962). Magee certainly builds upon some of the primary-source reviews, criticisms, commentaries, and writings of Berlin himself as presented in the Sears Reader. Yet Magee's contribution moves beyond previous biographies and studies of Berlin's work through an acutely detailed drawing together of archival materials, especially from the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress, to provide “a sustained interpretation of the songs and shows” (xi). Magee's historical research is supported by extensive citation from Kimball and Emmet's Complete Lyrics (2001) and frequently includes extracts – sometimes short, sometimes taking a full page or more – from Berlin's musical scores. Over 150 songs are included and interwoven with Magee's analysis. By supporting such close analyses of Berlin's uses of rhyme, rhythm and reinforcement in this way, Magee's book is likely to be especially pleasing to music scholars, but the text can occasionally be overwhelming in its detailed exploration of musical form. However, readers will probably be fine if they avoid worrying too much about immediately understanding “patterns of eighth notes against an explicit duple-meter beat” (130). Overall, anyone unable to read music scores will feel sufficiently guided to understand the significance of Magee's points and Berlin's techniques.

Although Magee is explicitly concerned with exploring Berlin's enormous musical legacy within musical theatre, not least chapter 7 exploring the evolution of Annie Get Your Gun (1946), Magee does not ignore Berlin's broader role as a songwriter, or the biographical experiences underpinning Berlin's temperamental reputation. Therefore, through the chronologically structured chapters, a well-informed argument develops acknowledging the biographical context, especially Berlin's professional relationships with producers, and also placing individual well-known songs into their original musical theatre context (such as “Easter Parade” as part of As Thousands Cheer, 1933). Magee's fundamental view is that Berlin's innovations in musical theatre have been underappreciated, diminished by the longevity of Berlin's career and repetition of musical theatre tropes past the period where their contributions were comfortably accommodated. For example, minstrelsy was a key American cultural form for Berlin, and regularly featured in his productions for many decades, not least because he felt that its “conventions, its structure, and its vitality” (28) gave him access to understanding “the mob,” the audience Berlin craved and sought to prioritize. Certainly, Berlin was still exploring “blackface” performances when developing his wartime show This Is the Army (1942), an experience where his instinctive pleasure for minstrelsy bruised up alongside military attitudes regarding segregated units and integrating black and white soldiers. However, despite Berlin's enthusiasm for popular appeal and American forms, Magee also notes Berlin's passion for opera, ballet and classical music forms, and even though the direct influence of these on his musical theatre shows dissipated, Berlin was consistently inspired to create counterpoint songs, bringing two contrasting melodies together: it was a form that reappeared throughout Berlin's career from the 1910s to the 1960s.

The longest two chapters in the book focus on Berlin's innovative single-composer Music Box revues of 1921–24 (chapter 4) and the collaborative work of Berlin, Kauffman and Co. (chapter 5), including the 1932 show Face the Music by Berlin with Moss Hart. That show includes one of my favourite Berlin songs – “Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee” – a song whose “collage-like parody” (163) of fair-weather song lyrics and overoptimistic political slogans from the Depression era is elegantly unpicked in table 5.3 (164).

Indeed, one minor quibble with an otherwise excellent book would be the omission of a listing at the front of the twelve tables presented throughout the book. Table 3.1 picks out the classical melodies to which Berlin added lyrics for “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody” in Ziegfield Follies of 1919 (92) as part of an extensive and rewarding discussion over nearly twenty pages (82–100) on that particular show, focussing on that song. Further tables illustrate the subtle changes, renaming, reordering and restaging in different versions of Berlin's shows, with table 7.2 providing a fascinating snapshot of staging emphasis through tracking the song order of Annie Get Your Gun productions from 1946, 1966 and 1999 (263–64).

Alongside the musical score excerpts or lyrics that dominate the books, Magee also includes an appropriately diverse range of photographic illustrations – promotional shots relating to the shows, their stars and key performance venues, and images of Berlin and his collaborators. These reinforce the book's value for cultural historians as well as for musicologists, thus hopefully opening the text to appeal to anyone interested in Berlin himself or in mid-twentieth-century musical theatre.