Reviews & Media

Media Appearances

Gary’s first book, Unfair to Genius, is quoted in the June 5, 2023 issue of The New Yorker, “The Case For and Against Ed Sheeran.”

Watch Gary’s 3/24/22 presentation to America’s oldest theatrical club, The Lambs, here.

Gary Appeared on WHYY’s Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane on 7/3/18 to Discuss “Irving Berlin-Immigrant, Patriot, Songsmith.” Click here to listen to the podcast.

Gary answers jazz author Debbie Burke’s questions about Adventures of a Jazz Age Lawyer here. And here he applies “The Page 99” test to the book.

Click here for Gary’s discussion of intellectual property law on the podcast “Patently Obvious.”

Gary’s 4/5/15 Wall Street Journal Op-Ed “Tuning Music Royalties to the Times” is here.  He discussed it on Fox Business Network’s “Risk and Reward” here.

Click here to listen to Gary’s 7/31/12 appearance on Milt Rosenberg’s Extension 720, WGN-Chicago.

Gary spoke to Sean Moncrieff of Talk Radio Ireland on 9/13/12:  Part I    Part II

Gary’s guest blog for Oxford University Press commemorating the 100th anniversary of America’s first music performing rights organization can be found here.

WRTI Philadelphia’s Meridee Duddleston spoke to Gary about copyright law, radio and popular music on 1/9/13.  Excerpts of the interview are here.

Gary’s Spotify playlist of 15 standards accused of copyright infringement by Ira B. Arnstein is at OUP Blog.


Reviews

“Rosen’s work is clear and legally informative, but it’s also quite fun: it’s both legal and cultural history, and the author has a fine wit . . . Adventures recites some great tales, some of them quite scandalous.”
Pacific Historical Review

“A story so extraordinary that at times the reminder that the content is all true comes with a jolt.”
—Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice

“For the lay reader, the real treat is Rosen’s deft handling of Burkan’s life and times, plus the stories of his famous clients who managed to mess up their lives in outsized ways.”

Washington Independent Review of Books

“Lively and revealing.”
Eric Felten, The Wall Street Journal

“Absorbing. A thoughtful and in-depth look at the substance of many foundational cases in entertainment history.”
Greg Young, Author of The Bowery Boys Adventures in Old New York

“Rosen’s a good writer with a fun story to tell, and his enthusiasm makes Jazz Age Lawyer a delightful read. He loves these characters.”
Mark Judge, Author of If It Ain’t Got That Swing: The Rebirth of Grown-Up Culture

“Rosen’s chapters on the Chaplin-Burkan years are a must-read for Chaplin scholars.”

Tad Hershorn, Media Industries

“Adventures of a Jazz Age Lawyer rescues a key figure in early twentieth-century popular culture from (relative) obscurity and tells his fascinating story with insight and style. I don’t know of anyone who writes about popular music more knowledgeably, penetratingly, and elegantly than Gary Rosen.”
Ben Yagoda, author of About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made and The B Side: The Death of Tin Pan Alley and the Rebirth of the Great American Song

“Gary Rosen is a born storyteller. This is both a first-rate story and a previously untold one.”
Peter Jaszi, Professor Emeritus, American University Law School

“With its engaging characters and intriguing plot, this book reads like a literary novel. Without trying to ‘analyze’ Nathan Burkan, Gary Rosen gives a clear and moving picture of his character, both his flaws and virtues. In the course of tracing Burkan’s career, Rosen provides fascinating historical background peopled with such colorful characters as Victor Herbert, Charlie Chaplin, and Gloria Vanderbilt.”
Philip Furia, author of The Poets of Tin Pan Alley

“A lively, in-depth, and unprecedented portrait of Nathan Burkan, one of the most famous American lawyers of the twentieth century and a pioneer of intellectual property law. Gary Rosen presents Burkan as situated at the eye of a legal and cultural storm created by the advent of entertainment culture. Burkan—with his legal brilliance and panache—would do so much to shape that culture. This book is both a biography of an important legal figure and a history of jazz-age popular culture and entertainment law, all in one.”
Robert Spoo, author of Without Copyrights: Piracy, Publishing, and the Public Domain

“While Nathan Burkan is a lawyer you’ve probably never heard of, his courtroom battles on behalf of popular entertainers like Charlie Chaplin and Mae West were often filled with salacious tales of the rich and famous, and the trials involving gangsters like Frank Costello and Arnold Rothstein are an enduring part of American social history. This book is a great read!”
Howard Suber, coauthor of Creativity and Copyright: Legal Essentials for Screenwriters and Creative Artists

“Known to legal scholars as the ‘Moses of American copyright law,’ Nathan Burkan was much more. Burkan represented an A-list of celebrity clients in causes ranging from copyright infringement and criminal defense, to high-society divorce and custody battles, touching nearly every legal cause célèbre in the first third of the Twentieth Century. Rosen brings Burkan’s story to vivid life in a meticulously researched, well-paced biography.”
Kevin Parks, author of Music & Copyright in America: Toward the Celestial Jukebox


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