This was clearly a labour of love for the author, the amount of research that he must have done to cover so much is truely outstanding. The entry for each composer is relatively short but more than enough to give you a picture of the person and where they fit in the history of classical music composers, any more detail and the book would be unmanagebly long. I have since ordered specific books about certain composers based on what I read in this collection of mini biographies.

Whilst reading this I tended to put on music by the composer I was reading about, or related composers at least since I'd listen for about an hour to a single composer but would cover 3 or 4 biographies during that time.

In addition to the impressive amount of information here the way it is written is great. Within the first 2 pages for a given composer the author manages to paint a picture of the personality of them so vivid that it feels like I'm several chapters into a novel with that composer as the protagonist. The ability to give such a clear impression in a short amount of prose is to be admired.

There're some subjective opinoins throughout of course given we are discussing their music along with the composer themselves and whilst you might not agree with all of it it's always backed up with a solid line of reasoning and non combative. I'm sure as well the amount of space given to different composers also reflects the authors preferences somewhat but in the case I want to know more I'll search for a specific biography.

If you enjoy classical music and want to know more about how the music you listen to fits into the history of the world it's a perfect book for you. Loved every minute of the 3 months it took me to get to the end :)