Andre Millard, ed. The Electric Guitar: A History of an American Icon. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. x + 215 pp. ISBN 0-8018-7862-4, $45.00 (cloth).

In 1996 the Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Center for the Studyof Invention and Innovation sponsored a symposium, "Electrified,Amplified, and Deified: The Electric Guitar, Its Makers, andIts Players." This book distills and amplifies the scholarshipin that encounter between researchers, innovators, and practitioners.The editor takes up where speakers left off and contributesthe introduction, conclusion, and five of nine chapters. Millardmakes a case for the electric guitar as a totem of modern Americanculture. Intended for the general