Carnegie Hall Treasures offers an insider's history of the famous performance venue, but this isn't simply a collection of backstage tales. Instead, it's largely a tour of Carnegie Hall's extensive archives, with chapters tracing the composers, conductors, vocalists and musical genres that have been featured there through the years. Each slice of the hall's personality is captured through images and text in equal measure; photos and programs are contextualized with brief explanations. The jazz chapter is particularly delightful, studded with bold, colorful advertisements for concerts featuring greats like Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong and Sun Ra.
Perhaps the best part of the package, though, is the folder of memorabilia accompanying the handsome, sturdy book--the "treasures" of the title--containing reproductions of artifacts as varied as a 1943 telegram from Serge Koussevitzky to Leonard Bernstein and a program from a 1912 event hosted by the Society of American Magicians. These scraps of paper are a vivid testimony to the hall's lively history. --Kelly Faircloth, freelance writer