Where would the music of Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers and George Gershwin have been without the lyrics of their counterparts Johnny Mercer, Lorenz Hart and Ira Gershwin? In this study, the author examines the part played by lyricists in the Golden Age of American popular music, comparing their light verse with the comic prose of the magazines "Vanity Fair" and the "New Yorker". In addition to the great names, the book also looks at lesser-known lyricists working in Tin Pan Alley, in Hollywood and in jazz throughout the 1920s and 1930s.