If It Ain't Baroque: More Music History as It Ought to Be Taught, Paperback/David W. Barber

Not content with having hilariously skewered the lives of great composers in Bach, Beethoven and the Boys, in If It Ain't Baroque musical humorist David W. Barber takes aim at their works as well. From symphonies to solo songs, from motets to madrigals to masses, Barber wittily yet informatively tells readers everything they need to know (and more ) about the various different genres of classical music. (And if you're not sure what a genre is, don't worry - Barber will explain that too.) As always, the facts are true and the information is accurate, it's just that Barber has a particularly wicked way of looking at things and a knack for finding out obscure facts and presenting them in a light-hearted way. So if you like to laugh while you learn, you've come to the right place. And again as always, Barber's clever prose is perfectly accompanied by the delightful illustrations of cartoonist Dave Donald.