Gershwin, His Life and Music: His Life and Music

The name George Gershwin is a magical one. It conjures up the Twenties, Broadway glitter, beauty and extravagance. Begin humming a Gershwin tune anywhere from Boston to Bangkok and someone will finish it for you: Rhapsody in Blue, Summertime, Lady Be Good, An American in Paris, to name a few. Called “Mr. Music” by his contemporaries, Gershwin (1898–1937) was a musical genius whose life epitomizes the American success story. The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, he was raised on the Lower East Side and never finished high school, yet grew up to become rich, famous, and the intimate of celebrities. Although George Gershwin's life was cut short by illness over sixty years ago, he is probably better known today than ever before. And yet too often he is the subject more of popular invention than of truth. In Gershwin: His Life and Music, author Charles Schwartz attempts to redress this imbalance by separating fact from myth. The result is an extraordinarily fascinating and honest account of the man who created such beauty that he became a legend in his own time.