Shepherd, Virden, Vulliamy, and Wishart combine, historical, musicological, and sociological materials and styles of analysis in ways that really connect. Analyses of social class systems apeak in translatable ways to analyses of musical forms. Not only that, both are connected to an understanding of the organizations through which art works are distributed to their ultimate audiences. And further, we see how people learn, in school, what kins of music are to be taken in what ways, what is 'serious' and worthy of our attention, and what is 'mere' popular music to be treated as cultural trash. Finally, and very importantly, we see that theorizing about these matters in an integral part of the process by which dominant class groups justify their domination, cultural and otherwise"--P. [4] of cover.