When we think of great motion picture soundtrack composers today most of us probably instantly think John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, and many others, but in the 1930's, 40's, and 50's one name was just as famous; Max Steiner. Steiner gave us such incredible scores that included King Kong, Gone with the Wind, Now Voyager, Since You Went Away, Johnny Belinda, The Caine Mutiny, Casablanca, and many more. His scores were nominated 18 times and he won three Academy Awards for his work. Learning more about this great film composer should be on any fan of film's bucket list. Learning more about Composer Steiner is on mine.
Surfing around on Amazon a few months back I ran across an extremely interesting book called Max Steiner: Composing, Casablanca, and the Golden Age of Film Music written by Peter Wegele. I got a sample of the book and found it very informative about Max Steiner and I wanted to purchase it. However, I noticed the price for the Kindle e-book was set at $71! I thought what a strange and outrageous price for an e-book but in some sense I can understand a high price for a book like this, due to the amount of research required in writing such a book, but $71 is not just a bit much, it is a HELL of a lot of too much!!
It is sad that I will have to pass on a book that I know is full of excellent information regarding this great film composer but for some reason, either the author, or the publisher feels the price of this book should be set at a King Kong of a price. For me I’ll pass on this seemly interesting work until some sanity takes hold on the pricing of this e-book.
