Berlin, the Russian-Jewish immigrant who became his adopted country's greatest pop troubadour, had written his magnum opus - what one commentator has called a "holiday Moby-Dick" - a timeless song that resonates with some of the deepest themes in American culture: yearning for a mythic New England past, belief in the magic of the "merry and bright" Christmas season, longing for the havens of home and hearth. In this vividly written narrative, Jody Rosen provides both the fascinating story behind the making of America's favorite Christmas carol and a cultural history of the nation that embraced it. By the time Bing Crosby introduced the tune in the winter of 1942, it had evolved into something far grander: the stately yuletide ballad that would become the world's all-time top-selling and most widely recorded song. When Irving Berlin first conceived the song "White Christmas," he envisioned it as a "throwaway" - a satirical novelty number for a vaudeville-style stage revue.
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