By Judy Samelson
12 Dec 2009

Wicked The Musical: A Pop-Up Compendium of Splendiferous Delight and Thrillifying Intrigue
Published and written by: DK Publishing
Publication Date: September 2009
List price: $29.95 hardcover; 24 pages, illustrated

You've seen the musical, now relive Wicked's most memorable moments in what the publisher's web site calls a "moveable paper tableaux." Each spread of this new eye-popping pop-up book brings to life some of the musical's most beloved and astonishing scenes, such as Glinda's humorous entrance in her bubble machine and Elphaba's highly dramatic, gravity-defying moment. But there's more, notes the publisher, as the book displays "secret artifacts (and artifictions) that you won't find anywhere else: the letters Galinda and Elphaba wrote to their parents, a map of the Emerald City, the Shiz University student newspaper and a miniature Grimmerie complete with spells."

Reading the Plays of Wendy Wasserstein
By Jan Balakian
Published by: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books
Publication Date: January 2010
List price: $19.99 paperback; 400 pages; illustrated

"When I think of my plays as a body of work," wrote the late Wendy Wasserstein, "I always hope that they reflect how a group of people live at a certain time." Wasserstein was, indeed, a chronicler of her time. Her major plays — which include Isn't It Romantic, The Sisters Rosensweig, An American Daughter and The Heidi Chronicles, for which she won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play — explored the landscape of feminism, family, class and Jewish-American identity, balancing drama and comedy and drawing on influences as diverse as Chekhov, Moss Hart and Betty Friedan. In this new study of her work, the author places Wasserstein's seven major plays in historical context to show, according to the publisher, "a connection between the evolution of the women's movement in America and the conflicts within her plays." Wasserstein's political concerns are further revealed in interviews conducted with her before her death in 2006 and with her close friends, playwright Christopher Durang and director Daniel Sullivan. Among the 50 black-and-white illustrations included in the book are handwritten pages from Wasserstein's notebooks housed at the Wasserstein archives at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, to which the author was given access and which provide insight into the playwright's creative process.

Gore Vidal: Snapshots in History's Glare
By Gore Vidal
Published by: Abrams
Publication Date: October 1, 2009
List price: $40 hardcover; 256 pages; illustrated

Gore Vidal, author of 25 novels, hundreds of essays, television and movie scripts, a Tony Award-winning play The Best Man (1960), and one of America's most celebrated wits and raconteurs, has come forth with a visual feast that is at once a personal memoir and a social history of the 20th century. Five hundred full-color illustrations, letters, manuscripts and other items from Vidal's personal archives, the publisher notes, escort the reader "into the Kennedys' Camelot, as well as onto the set of 'Ben Hur,' and into the private lives of Eleanor Roosevelt, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward [friends who are represented in photos over six decades], and Tennessee Williams, to name just a few." Vidal's personal reflections on his days as an officer in the Army during World War II, his political life and his well-documented public feuds with William F. Buckley and Norman Mailer are also offered up in his frank, take-no-prisoners style.

Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong
By Terry Teachout
Published by: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication Date: December 2, 1009
List price: $30 hardcover; 496 pages; illustrated

Wall Street Journal arts columnist Terry Teachout was given access to hundreds of private recordings made by Louis Armstrong in the latter part of his life in which the jazz great revealed his thoughts to friends and colleagues. From this invaluable, personal resource, and others previously unavailable to Armstrong biographers — as well as his personal appreciation of Armstrong's artistic merit — Teachout, notes the publisher, has crafted "a sweeping new narrative biography of this towering figure." The man, known alternately as Pops or Satchmo, is revealed to have had a quick-wit, and a surprisingly sharp edge and complex nature. He was also a famously charismatic individual with admirers ranging from Johnny Cash to Jackson Pollock. Teachout details the personal story that took Armstrong from poverty-stricken childhood in New Orleans to tours in the segregated South to acclaim in Europe in the 1930s and ultimate mainstream success in the '50s. He explores Armstrong's apprenticeship with Joe Oliver and Fletcher Henderson, the role wife Lil played in his business, and notes the publisher, "shares full, accurate versions of such storied events as Armstrong's decision to break up his big band and his quarrel with President Eisenhower." Teachout, who was a jazz bassist before taking up writing, brings his considerable knowledge of the art form to bear on this vivid portrait of the man regarded as the greatest jazz musician of the 20th century.

Judy Samelson, former editor of Playbill, gathers information on theatre-related books, including published plays, for Playbill.com's monthly Shelf Life column. Write her at jsamelson@playbill.com.