The Voice of the City: Vaudeville and Popular Culture in New York (review)

Abstract

Robert W. Snyder's book has been reprinted with a new preface from its first edition, originally published in 1989 by Oxford University Press. It joins (or more correctly, rejoins) the mass of literature on vaudeville in America, a subject of mystic attraction, that refuses to die in cultural memory. Snyder focuses on New York City, which cannot [End Page 349] accurately be said to be the birthplace of vaudeville, but was certainly in its day the leading purveyor of this form of popular entertainment for the rest of the country.