Piano Roles is a lively and up-to-date history of the piano that examines both its evolution in classical and popular musical cultures around the world, and its every-changing social roles over the past three centuries. Parakilas and his colleagues have struck a canny balance between scholarly rigor and popular appeal, with chapters alternating between more or less straightforward historical surveys and informal essays on such offbeat topics as the piano less, the piano in the movies, and the piano in Japan, and even the evolution of the piano bench. This is a beautiful book that is equally fascinating to read and fun to look at.