Works of Stephen Sondheim

Sondheim's 2010 Finishing the Hat annotates his lyrics "from productions dating 1954–1981. In addition to published and unpublished lyrics from West Side Story, Follies and Company, the tome finds Sondheim discussing his relationship with Oscar Hammerstein II and his collaborations with composers, actors and directors throughout his lengthy career".[10][11] The book, first of a two-part series, is named after a song from Sunday in the Park With George. Sondheim said, "It's going to be long. I'm not, by nature, a prose writer, but I'm literate, and I have a couple of people who are vetting it for me, whom I trust, who are excellent prose writers".[12][13] Finishing the Hat was published in October 2010. According to a New York Times review, "The lyrics under consideration here, written during a 27-year period, aren't presented as fixed and sacred paradigms, carefully removed from tissue paper for our reverent inspection. They're living, evolving, flawed organisms, still being shaped and poked and talked to by the man who created them".[14] The book was 11th on the New York Times' Hardcover Nonfiction list for November 5, 2010.[15]

The sequel, Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981–2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes and Miscellany, was published on November 22, 2011. Continuing from Sunday in the Park With George, the book includes sections on Sondheim's work in film and television.[16]

Musicologist and Library of Congress curator Mark Eden Horowitz conducted a series of in-depth interviews with Sondheim, published in 2003 as Sondheim on Music: Minor Details and Major Decisions.