"Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet," by Jennifer Homans (Random House, 672 pp.)
Writing for The New York Times, Toni Bentley called "Apollo's Angels" "the only truly definitive history of the most impossibly fantastic art form, ballet." Jennifer Homans, currently the dance critic for The New Republic, is a former professional dancer and her hands-on feel for the art form shows in this finely tuned survey of 400 years of cultural and artistic history.