My review ...

... of Bruce Jenkins's Goodbye: In Search of Gordon Jenkins is here.
One of the great things about blogging is that one can expand upon and clarify what one has written in the more confined space of the paper. Even have second thoughts. If you're a Gordon Jenkins fan, or are just interested in American pop music in the 20th century, Bruce Jenkins's book is one you'll want to read. I probably should have mentioned in my review that Bruce Jenkins says in the book that the research he did enabled him to connect with his father in a way he never had before. My own impression was of a fundamentally sad loner really at home only with his music. He's quoted somewhere in the book as saying he was a talent lover, willing to forgive people with great gifts their often just-as-great faults, to put up with them in a way he never would put up with unpleasant behavior on the part of "ordinary" people. As he said in a letter to Bruce: "It sure beats being just plain folks..." I have never myself felt that talented people were better than plain folks and I think the greater the talent the more responbility you have to behave well, actually ( though I am perfectly well aware that this is rarely the case). At any rate, I finished the book with as many questions about Gordon Jenkins as answers. Which is OK. People are hard to get a handle on.
One thing I wish I had discussed -- but didn't for lack of space -- was the criticism of Gordon Jenkins that Bruce Jenkins elicited from Jonathan Schwartz, who complains about "the Jenkins sentimentality and the harmonies," "the overstatement of violins ... the Tchaikovsky of it..." Schwartz is wrong. It is precisely the sweetness that makes Jenkins's sadness appealing. To quote Tchaikovsky himself: "it is all so sad and yet so sweet to muse upon the past." We take pleasure in sweet sadness, not in sadness itself, straight up, no chaser.

UPDATE: You may also want to read my colleague David Stearns's review of Ethel Merman: The Biggest Star on Broadway: Merman: A big voice and a persona to match.