Who would have thought that a book about the 400-year-old history of ballet would crack Amazon’s Top 25? Apollo’s Angels, by Jennifer Homans is now at #23, after an interview with the author on NPR’s Fresh Air last night (it was also recently featured on the cover of the NYT BR, which also named it one of the Top 10 Best Books of 2010).

As with ballet itself, it may all be in the timing. As Terry Gross points out,

It’s kind of ballet season, with lots of companies perfoming the Nutcracker for the holidays and with the new film Black Swan, a psychological thriller, about a ballerina [played by Natalie Portman] preparing for her leading role in Swan Lake.

But, says Gross, you don’t need to be interested in ballet, to be fascinated by Apollo’s Angels…it’s rich with history about class structure, gender, costume, shifting images of the ideal body and ideas of what the body is physically capable of.”

Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet Jennifer Homans Retail Price: $35.00 Hardcover: 672 pages Publisher: Random House – (2010-11-02) ISBN / EAN: 1400060605 / 9781400060603

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 14th, 2010 at 9:14 am and is filed under 2010 - Fall, History, Nonfiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.