The NPR Curious Listener's Guide to Jazz

This guide to jazz would probably be helpful to someone new to the subject, but might be even better for someone who already has a bit of familiarity with jazz history. I say this because, although the book is not an encyclopedia of jazz, individual chapters are internally organized alphabetically, rather than chronologically. This produces some potentially confusing results for the newcomer. For instance, in the chapter on styles or genres of jazz, it means that Bebop is discussed before New Orleans jazz. Even Dixieland revival is discussed before New Orleans jazz. And they are all discussed before Swing. How lucky for the reader then that, in the chapter on jazz greats, so many early pioneers just happen to have surnames beginning with letters early in the alphabet (Armstrong, Bechet, Beiderbecke...). Imagine the potential confusion if Charlie Parker had been named Charlie Barker! Still, as a long-time jazz fan, I learned something useful in every chapter.

A great guide to get an overview of jazz music! Well written and interesting.

This is a compact, reader-friendly guide -- a good entry point into what is becoming a dauntingly large literature of jazz. Some sections are set up like a reference book, with alphabetized entries, making this a keeper for looking things up in future. Others provide good topical overviews. I recommend this book to students in my introductory "Evolution of Jazz" course. One quibble: no entry for "mainstream jazz."

This book will certainly help the absolute noob know more than he/she did before reading it, but it is poorly balanced. How on earth do you put forth 304 pages of jazz including whole chapters on artists and great recordings, and give just one mention (to tell the reader you're not going to say anything about) of Cannonball Adderly--and not even that, not so much as a footnote, for Wes Montgomery?

This book would have been a good primer for a curious listener, however this book comes with an agenda. This book is full of contradictions, back-handed compliments and outright insults towards other jazz artists/groups i.e. The Preservation Hall Jazz Band (p.66) This is all done in an effort to pigeonhole jazz into the limited world view of the Marsalis/Crouch/Murray camp which basically dismisses all jazz music that does not uphold their standards. Expectedly, the book attacks sub-genres such as Fusion, Third Stream and Free/Out Jazz all the while overemphasizing the contributions of Wynton Marsalis. NPR should be embarrassed to be associated with this text. For an unbiased introduction try  Jazz For Dummies, 2nd Edition .