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I've owned this book for some time now, and I'll begin by saying that it is indeed a very well-written, entertaining and helpful book worthy of a lot of praise. My one problem with it is minor but it keeps on growing so here it is: imagine a similar book on films that is great but goes on glorifying Citizen Kane and films by Fellini, Kurosawa, Bergman and the like, while simply thinking most films made after Godfather Part II don't deserve a nod. Or a book on Yankees history that falls over itself praising the likes of Ruth, Gehrig, and DiMaggio but stops once color TV became common in America. Jeter and Rivera get a mere one-liner as a part of Yankee history. To be mean and slightly unfair, this is that book for classical music. Dead men from the Black and White era often get unqualified praise, while people that are still active get treated quite harshly sometimes. Men like Bruno Walter and Artur Rubinstein can simply do no wrong, while today's main figures are all bashed in some way. I'm only a novice so it may be true that nobody active today can stand up to the greats of yesteryears. But for the sake of variety to the modern listener, I think it would've been better if the author more often recommended recordings that somewhat deviated from his favorite legendary benchmark recordings from the 1960s. If you were to give a list of movies to someone that hasn't seen a single one, you wouldn't want to just go off the common "greatest ever" list. The comparison is of course unfair in some ways, but I make it to advance my one problem with the book. I will reiterate though that it is a very good one.Get more detail about The NPR Listener's Encyclopedia of Classical Music.