This is a collection of more than 150 excerpts from books, journals, magazines and newspapers, creating an anthology of essays about jazz - the life and the music. Dividing the book into three sections - "Autobiography", "Reportage" and "Criticism", Robert Gottlieb also provides an overall introduction and a brief preface to each piece. There are first-person narratives by Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Billie Holliday, Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker, Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller. There is journalism about musicians and recordings by Whitney Balliet, Leonard Feather, Nat Hentoff, Ralph Ellison, Rudi Blesh, Lillian Ross, A.B. Spellman and Dan Morgenstern. The critiques of major musicians are by Marshall Stearns, Henry Pleasants, Will Friedwald, Gary Giddins, Andre Hodeir, Eric Hobsbawn, Philip Larkin, Albert Murray, Stanley Crouch, LeRoi Jones, Jean-Paul Sartre, Gunther Schuller and Virgil Thompson.