It's more than worth its $29.99 paperback price, and is certainly the most interesting of the recent batch of film music related books released this year.
The Rozsa Forum seems to have to only active thread on the release; it includes feedback from the author himself:
I'm reading it right now on my Kindle - it's $10 cheaper that way. (There was another thread that mentioned this book coming out which is how I knew about it but vanished away into the archives.)
I'm enjoying it - it's a bit scholarly with musical examples and occasional academic terms that could be replaced with simpler more familiar words to the same effect - but it's quite readable, and looks at the music and the films through a larger cultural lens.
It led me to watch a couple of biblical epics I hadn't already seen - Samson and Delilah and David and Bathsheba. Which got me to pay better attention to the Kritzerland release of D & B (what an extraordinary score) and check out the suite of S & D. Plus I finally broke down and bought Quo Vadis, Ben Hur, and Ten Commandments on blu ray (they're crazy cheap on Amazon) - so I've been having a fun month with the double time machine - back to the ancient world, and even further back to the 1950s!
Bumping once more to give it a bit more exposure. Something I'm finding most valuable about this book are the references to other books on movies, especially epic films. Some I intend to follow up on (but I don't have the book handy so can't give any examples.)
Just finished reading this book. Unfortunately I can't read music so I couldn't appreciate many of the references which included actual samples of music printed in the book. I got the idea to have my iPod handy and was able to actually listen to some of the cues discussed as I read. There is also discussion of the films as social products of the times in which they were made. Comparisons are also made among the scores of Rozsa and Newman with each other. For instance Rozsa's approach to Quo Vadis as opposed to Ben-Hur and King of Kings. Then, similar comparison between The Robe and The Greatest Story Ever Told. The addition of the Hallelujah Chorus in the latter is also a topic. I would have liked a glossary to more clearly define some of the terms I was not familiar with. There are limited illustrations and ads from the films. There is an extensive index and bibliography. The book is also available as an eBook which is thee one I purchased. All in all a worthwhile read.
Just using this thread shamelessly to point up an old 1960s production that hasn't got one note of music, but was celebrated in its day. It never turns up on American lists of such productions but it was a milestone. Dennis Potter scripted. And see how much Scorsese lifted for his film:
