You'd think a play about the relationship between George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev based on the recollections of Marlin Fitzwater, Bush's former press secretary, would be a pretty straightforward affair. There should be some history, some transcripts acted verbatim by actors, and a few historical flashbacks. After all, this is the town that [...]

I have a hard time imagining that anybody who enjoyed Alex Ross' excellent history of 20th Century classical music, The Rest Is Noise, wouldn't also get something out of Hallelujah Junction, the entertaining, occasionally punchy, memoirs of composer John Adams. The two books complement each other well—Ross forcefully argues that music history was a chaotic [...]