If you have the slightest interest in music, Eastern Europe in transition, and intellectual thought, then you owe it to yourself to read this book. Proper obeisance is made to the academic gods - Ricoeur, Clifford, Bourdieu, Geertz, Gadamer and the rest - and the references are sincere and thoughtful. But most of all you will be enthralled by Rice's personal account of his discovery of Bulgarian music, and of the lives of a wonderful couple who perform that music and became not just his 'informants' but his friends, indeed his family. The book is personal, revelatory, and stimulating. If only all musical scholarship were this good!