Talk about your special interest reference works;The New Grove Dictionary of American Music qualifies with a vengeance. This set, in four hefty volumes, is not one of those that no home should be without. But if your interests run strongly toward American music, you'll find it useful, interesting, and informative. Note that "American music" in this context is not strictly of the sort commonly known as "classical"; the editors have included folk, jazz, popular, and performance art. (One set of opposing pages in Volume 1, chosen at random, offers details on the disparate likes of Luciano Berio--concentrating on his American years--the city of Berkeley, Busby Berkeley, Berklee College, the Berkshire Music Center, and Irving Berlin.) It makes the books useful for the writer or academic, and they're also fun to riffle through at random. One caveat: the set is now more than a decade old, and anyone whose interest lies strictly in the 1990s should turn elsewhere for information.