Finalist for the 2014 George R. Terry Book Award, Academy of Management "The thesis of this multilayered, impressive scholarly study is that jazz is shaped by the processing of the recorded product from its geographical region, its reception and active participant audience, social structure, and its marketing and diffusion... The multiple graphs and charts serve as important sources for understanding ... Read morethe global aspects and diffusion of this innovative musical form."
Choice "One of the most enjoyable things about this book is that it demonstrates the importance and historically contingent nature of social categories... Other people who study product and organizational categories would do well to emulate his concern for concrete phenomena... His sensitivity to time and place are critical to the insights he draws from his research, insights that have wide applicability outside the early jazz recording industry."
Heather A. Haveman, Administrative Science Quarterly "The entire book rewards the reading, both for what it tells us substantively about a major art form and what it tells us theoretically about processes of legitimation, diffusion, and canonization."
Gabriel Rossman, American Journal of Sociology "The author should be commended on the depth and scope of the work... In summary, Phillips sheds considerable light on the formation of jazz, its dissemination, its institutions, musicians and geography, and does so with a variety of analysis tools and unique historical data."
Journal of Economic Literature Show Less