What is jazz? As jazz continues its uneasy move from a popular to a more high-brow cultural category, scholars have begun to look beyond the canon of acknowledged jazz greats to try to get a wider angle on the history of the music . The three editors of this volume are among the most well-known of the so-called New Jazz Studies scholars, and they have collected a stellar group of like-minded writers to address some of the big questions that confront the field right now. The table of contents is book-ended by two essays that address very large-scale historiographic questions about jazz. It begins with Eric Porter, who asks why the jazz canon developed in the way it did, and ends with Sherrie Tuckers thoughtful essay on the idea of identity in jazz history and why identity has become such a touchstone. Between these two are excellent pieces on topics such as how jazz history is shaped by the little-examined tropes of music education, why the concept of Latin jazz has such a troubled history, what role humor plays in jazz (and why no one want to discuss it), why relations between jazz and avant-garde music have been uneasy, why it is important to acknowledge that Louis Armstrong (in the canon) loved Guy Lombardo (not in the canon), and much more.