Gerald Nachman, Right Here on Our Stage Tonight!: Ed Sullivan’s America (University of California, $29.95). A lively anecdotal history of The Ed Sullivan Show, the TV program that put Louis Armstrong, William Inge, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Van Cliburn, John Gielgud, Edward Villella, and Richard Pryor (among many, many others) in prime time, in the process defining the now-lost, insufficiently lamented middlebrow culture of the Fifties and Sixties. This book would have profited greatly from the ministrations of an editor with a sharp blue pencil and an eye for repetition, but it’s still readable and informative (TT).

First Drama Quartette, Don Juan in Hell (Saland Publishing). Charles Boyer, Cedric Hardwicke, Agnes Moorehead, and Charles Laughton perform the “Don Juan in Hell” scene from George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman with stupendous verve and elegance. This celebrated 1952 Columbia Masterworks recording, which has never before been reissued in any format, is now available as an mp3-only download for the unbelievable price of $1.98. What on earth are you waiting for? Grab it right this minute before somebody at Amazon figures out that they ought to be charging ten times as much (TT).

Vladimir Horowitz at Carnegie Hall–The Private Collection: Haydn and Beethoven (RCA Red Seal). The latest installment of RCA’s ongoing series of previously unreleased concert recordings contains versions of Haydn’s E Flat Piano Sonata and Beethoven’s “Moonlight” and “Waldstein” Sonatas made at Carnegie Hall between 1945 and 1947. As usual with Horowitz, these commanding live performances have a nervous, sometimes unsettling edge not always present in his studio recordings. Given the age and nature of the source material, the sound is surprisingly good (TT).

Todd London with Ben Pesner and Zannie Giraud Voss, Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play (Theatre Development Fund, $14.95 paper). This is the book that everybody in the theater business is talking about, with good reason. Based on a survey of playwrights and other theater professionals, it offers a detailed and dismayingly candid portrait of how new American plays get produced–or, more often, don’t. Can a professional playwright really hope to make a living today without teaching or writing for TV? Who decides what plays get on stage? Are playwrights and producers talking past one another? All these questions are answered in Outrageous Fortune, and the answers are both provocative and disturbing (TT).

The Orphan’s Home Cycle (Signature Theatre, 555 W. 42, closes May 8). Horton Foote’s three-part condensation of his great nine-play cycle about American family life in the first part of the twentieth century has just been extended through May 8. This means that there will now be five single-day marathon presentations of the complete cycle, on February 6 and 27, March 6, April 3, and May 8. Having seen all three parts separately, I suspect that seeing them in a single day is likely to be the best way to experience this not-to-be-missed theatrical event. Get your tickets while you can (TT).

Our Town (Barrow Street Theatre, 27 Barrow St.). Stephen Kunken is now playing the Stage Manager in what has become the longest-running commercial production of Thornton Wilder’s masterpiece ever to be mounted. Alas, it can’t run forever, so if you have yet to see the best show in New York, get cracking. David Cromer’s staging is a re-creative landmark, at once arrestingly original and fundamentally faithful in its approach to the author’s well-loved text. Don’t listen if anybody tries to tell you about the surprise ending–and once you’ve seen the show, don’t tell anybody what happens (TT).

Ben Hodges (ed)., The Play That Changed My Life: America’s Foremost Playwrights on the Plays That Influenced Them (Applause, $18.95 paper). The title and subtitle say it all. Among those present: Jon Robin Baitz, Nilo Cruz, Christopher Durang, Horton Foote, A.R. Gurney, Lynn Nottage, Sarah Ruhl, and John Patrick Shanley. Your interest in the nineteen essays will undoubtedly vary with your interest in the nineteen playwrights who wrote them, but every contribution is both readable and worth reading–albeit for very different reasons. I especially liked David Ives’ witty reminiscence of seeing Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance as a teenager in Chicago in the late Sixties. Oh, how the world has changed! (TT).

Great Performances: Passing Strange (PBS, Jan. 13, nine p.m. ET, check local listings). Spike Lee’s performance film-documentary of the Broadway production of Stew’s 2007 rock musical about the travails of a middle-class black bohemian makes its broadcast debut this month. The music is a bit plain-sounding, but the book and lyrics offer a revealing glimpse of a side of black life in America that rarely gets talked about, much less sung about. Annie Dorsen’s staging is full of punch, and Lee has filmed the show with tremendous verve (TT).