Lairds long immersion in the subject shows through in this book . . . he is as well placed as anyone to write a new study of Bernsteins life and work. The present book gives a concise, clear-headed account of an immensely charismatic musician whose personal life Laird describes as difficult and messy . . . there is a lot to enjoy in Lairds book. His success is achieved through lucid presentation and through a depth of knowledge lightly worn from which to evaluate Bernsteins achievements. * Gramophone * Reaktion's Critical Lives series has become a useful barometer for an artists reputation. Experts, rather than journalists or jobbing biographers, take the temperature of some of the cultures leading figures in concise, un-sensationalist studies . . . Laird offers a neatly filleted account of Bernstein's life and works. It is a calm if not entirely neutral supplement to the unwieldy and often controversial bibliography that now surrounds the composer. * Prospect * Lairds enthusiasm for his subject, kindled in a student encounter touchingly recalled in the final pages, must have eased the difficult task of compressing a complex man and a hectic career as composer, conductor, and public figure into 175 pages of text. * BBC Music Magazine * Lairds concise format, however, has the advantage of laying bare the chronological structure of Bernsteins career. In ninety pages you quickly see how much he accomplished in the first forty years of his life. * New York Review of Books *
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