Mapping the Terrain of Contemporary Popular Music Studies: Reading Authenticity Theory into The Popular Music Studies Reader Michael Mario Albrecht Bennett, A., Shank, B., & Toynbee, J. (Eds.). (2006). The popular music studies reader . New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-4153-0710-4. $39.95. The 1990s and the first half of the 2000s have seen a proliferation of popular music scholarship. The field has expanded from a motley band of rogue scholars fighting for institutional legitimacy to an emerging discipline featuring prominent scholars spanning many disciplines including cultural studies, sociology, history, ethnic studies, women studies, communication, music, and journalism to name a few. Previously, the most prominent existing reader devoted to popular music was Frith and Goodwin’s (1990) canonical collection, On Record . The editors of The Popular Music Studies Reader (2006) have compiled a collection of forty-three excerpts from key works published in the fifteen years since On Record , in hopes of addressing the vast array of scholarship that has flourished since the early nineties. In the introduction, the editors state that ‘‘it is the rapid expansion in the range of topics now researched and taught under the rubric of popular music studies that provides the rationale for this volume’’ (p. 6). The editors successfully map the complicated terrain of contemporary popular music studies, and offer a variety of methodologies and viewpoints. However, in order to preserve space for the large number of essays in the volume, the theoretical frameworks of the various authors are often severely reduced by editing the essays to a more easily digestible length. In this review essay, I briefly map the enormous terrain that the collection of essays attempts to cover. I begin by isolating the rupture that the editors cite as justification for the reader’s publication. From there, I outline the major themes of the book while acknowledging the breadth of the authors who comprise the reader in terms of their Michael Mario Albrecht is a Ph.D. candidate in the Communication Studies Department, University of Iowa. Correspondence to: 105 Becker Communication Studies Building, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA. Email: michael-albrecht@uiowa.edu ISSN 1535-8593 (online) # 2007 National Communication Association DOI: 10.1080/15358590701480721 The Review of Communication Vol. 7, No. 3, July 2007, pp. 314 Á 321