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Hotta is an unobtrusive narrator whose personal anecdotes are like grace notes on the larger score of Suzuki's life. * Wall Street Journal * Hotta takes on the life story of the man who made the mini-masters...The Suzuki story turns out to be a fascinating study in the hybrid nature of human culture, tracing a remarkable cross-century triple play-European music to Japanese discipline, ending with a putout at a first base manned by mad American parental ambition. -- Adam Gopnik * New Yorker * This well-researched, conceived, and executed book seems to be the first objective account of the man and his life. It is a revelation on many levels...[Suzuki] is about optimism, gentleness, doggedness, belief in children, humanity, and the affirmative properties of art in the face of violence and ignorance. -- David Mehegan * Arts Fuse * With eloquence and perception, Eri Hotta reveals how Suzuki began a musical revolution that has influenced countless young people across the world. Coming from the Method myself, I benefited greatly from many of Suzuki's deep convictions, including his core belief that great 'talent' emerges from nurtured training. As Suzuki recognized, and as this wonderful book reminds us, music joins composer, performer, and audience in a powerful existential bond. -- Leila Josefowicz, MacArthur Award-winning classical violinist A terrific, groundbreaking, and engrossing study of Shinichi Suzuki, whose approach to teaching young people transformed music education in the second half of the twentieth century. His effective and popular method made serious instruction widely accessible, without limiting the aspirations of all in deference to the gifted few. Transcending the formidable barriers of politics and culture, his achievement helped pave the way for traditions of music developed in the West to be integrated, celebrated, and reinvented in Asia. Suzuki's story is central to the flourishing of music as a vibrant international art. -- Leon Botstein, President of Bard College and Music Director and Principal Conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra Written with a warmth echoing that of its subject, this wonderful account is at once a biography and an intimate window into Japan's momentous twentieth century. -- Christopher Harding, author of <i>The Japanese: A History in Twenty Lives</i> A captivating historical perspective on a global phenomenon. Eri Hotta's account of Suzuki's fascinating life story unmasks the man and reveals the overall achievement of a musical hero. -- Fred Sherry, cellist and former Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

A terrific, groundbreaking, and engrossing study of Shinichi Suzuki, whose approach to teaching young people transformed music education in the second half of the twentieth century. His effective and popular method made serious instruction widely accessible, without limiting the aspirations of all in deference to the gifted few. Transcending the formidable barriers of politics and culture, his achievement helped pave the way for traditions of music developed in the West to be integrated, celebrated, and reinvented in Asia. Suzuki's story is central to the flourishing of music as a vibrant international art. -- Leon Botstein, President of Bard College and Music Director and Principal Conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra

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Eri Hotta is the author of Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy, a history of the attack on Pearl Harbor from the Japanese perspective. She has taught at the University of Oxford, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. She writes on a variety of subjects for Japanese and English-language readerships.

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