Stephen Sondheim
Art Isn’t Easy
- Author: Daniel Okrent (United States)
- Book type: biography
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Series: Jewish Lives
- Released: March 17, 2026
- Length: 336 pages
- Format: hardcover / ebook
- Prize: $ 35.00
- Order book from: Amazon / Bol
Daniel Okrent Stephen Sondheim biography review
- “An intricate, elegant tour through the life and psyche of an uneasy genius. Okrent’s book is stuffed with new matter and fascinating insights even for specialists like me who’ve been immersed in Sondheim’s biography and art for decades.” (Laurie Winer, author of Oscar Hammerstein II and the Invention of the Musical)
- “In this compact, densely pleasurable life of Stephen Sondheim, Daniel Okrent has achieved the remarkable feat of bringing to fresh life an endlessly chronicled subject in a compellingly readable and authoritative way.” (James Kaplan, author of Irving Berlin)
Blurb of the Stephen Sondheim biography
A revelatory look at the complex inner world of one of the twentieth century’s most beloved theatrical composers.
Stephen Sondheim (1930–2021) was a towering figure in American musical theater. Celebrated for his iconic Broadway shows such as Company, Sweeney Todd, and Into the Woods, his accolades include eight Tony Awards, multiple Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and a Pulitzer Prize. In this intimate biography, Daniel Okrent follows Sondheim through the tumult of his upbringing and his parents’ divorce, his acquaintance with Oscar Hammerstein II and subsequent discovery of musical theater, and his rise to fame as both a lyricist and composer.
Okrent shines new light on Sondheim’s tormented emotional life, wavering self-confidence, and alcoholism, drawing on the artist’s intimate correspondence with such notable figures as Hal Prince, Leonard Bernstein, and Arthur Laurents; exclusive interviews with his close friends and collaborators, including James Lapine and John Weidman; and Sondheim’s own oral history, which remained closed until his death. As Okrent explores the ways Sondheim’s music and lyrics express the inner man, he reveals a life that was defined by two parallel arcs: the movement from alienation to connection, and from ambivalence to resolution.
Daniel Okrent had careers as a book and magazine editor and was the first public editor of the New York Times. He is the prize-winning author of six books, including The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. He lives in New York City and on Cape Cod.