I received a digital copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This is a really fascinating, often in-depth look at what Wagner's music has meant throughout its history. Parts of the book read as a biography of Richard Wagner, but it's far more a biography of, to put a little flippantly, the Wagnerian "fandom" both during the composer's life and long after his death. The book does a very good job of presenting the breadth of Wagner's impact in various places, times, and in different intellectual and political circles--positive and negative. It doesn't shy away from Wagner's more unpleasant views, or from the ways his work has been used for ill--but it also presents a complicated, sometimes apparently contradictory Richard Wagner who cannot so easily be dismissed as any one thing and whose work has influenced countless others. I did not know very much about Wagnerian opera going into this book. I knew the general