Leonard Bernstein is internationally renowned as one of the most significant composers, musical inspirations, and creative minds of the 20th century. In addition, many consider him to be the greatest American conductor of all time. He is legendary, not only for his brilliant music-making but equally for his extreme passion, raw charisma, powerful convictions, and insatiable appetite for life. This remarkable photographic essay of Leonard Bernstein during the last six years of his life gives us rare insight into the disparate, sometimes vastly conflicting elements that shaped his work and deeply influenced everyone who was drawn into his inner world. It contains approximately 200 black-and-white photographs, most previously unpublished, taken on and off stage during 20 different events or concerts, along with personal comments and remembrances from over 50 of his colleagues, friends, and relatives. The foreword is by Hollywood superstar Lauren Bacall, the preface by Jamie Bernstein (Leonard Bernstein's eldest daughter), and the introduction by James M. Keller, Leonard Bernstein scholar-in-residence at the New York Philharmonic. These vivid images reveal Leonard Bernstein at work in his final years, as mortality encroached upon his unrelenting energy and indefatigable creative genius. "The book's wide pages brim with euphoric moments that give context to the final bleakness. It covers years of Bernstein at full throttle, freezing moments of intense rehearsals, his adrenalin bursts in performances, a Bernstein enveloped in work with fellow musicians, composers. One also gets a backstage world, the super-star entourage, managers and publicists whose solicitousness and expertise at their roles mirrored the maestro's intensity... How well Sherman succeeded is clear from the fiercely energetic, if sometimes heart-breaking human dimension of this book." * Huffington Post - Allan M. Jalon, Feb. 17. 2011 "'Leonard Bernstein At Work, His Final Years, 1984-1990' is a magnificent outpouring and tribute in the form of a vast photo essay with commentary. It deserves the highest recommendation and the widest circulation. No one in America alive today is unaffected by the tremendous legacy of this staggering musical genius. It is a great pleasure and privilege to see a portion of the man in these careful reflections and multiple-faceted mirrors." * The Midwest Book Review - Nancy Lorraine, Feb. 2011 "Author/photographer Steve J. Sherman is clearly a superb visual documentarian of classical music's elite performing artists... These photographs are truly "worth 1000 words" and more. Bernstein lived in the moment, and these 200 moments thankfully have been recorded for posterity. To truly understand him, you had to be there, to hear him conduct. This is the next best thing and is a book to cherish - a visual encapsulation of all that he was." * Music Media Monthly - Steve Danker, Jan 11, 2011 "From the time he first conducting the New York Philharmonic in 1943 until his death in 1990, Leonard Bernstein was a living legend. This lovingly prepared coffee-table book captures the lion in winter through arresting photographs taken on stage, backstage, with colleagues, and with friends. Along with these images, the great musician is remembered through glowing tributes from those who knew him. The unsung here of this sumptuous survey of Bernstein's final years is the photographer Steve J. Sherman, long a ubiquitous figure around New York's concert halls... This handsome volume preserves these penetrating and dynamic images for posterity." * Jewish Book Council - Bob Goldfarb, 2013 "A magnificent 190-page coffee table book of photographs by Steve J. Sherman... Who better than he to assemble the definitive photographic record of Lenny's final years, to capture the struggles and increasingly hard-won triumphs of the most remarkable, most gregarious, most photogenic musician any of us had ever known?" * The Record Geijutsu (Japan) - Theodore W. Libbey Jr., July 2013 "What an excellent celebration of our father's legacy. Steve J. Sherman's images are more than just beautiful; they are revealing, passionate and haunting." -- Jamie Bernstein Steve J. Sherman (New York City) is a premier performing arts photographer, with his close long-term associations with Carnegie Hall and the New York Times . His photos have been featured in countless books and magazines, on CD/DVD covers worldwide, in television documentaries on most major networks, and have been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.stevejsherman.com Pages: 192