Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers

Rodgers was working on this dishy memoir (with New York Times chief theater critic Green) when she died at age 83 in 2014. Rodgers, daughter of one half of Rodgers & Hammerstein, meant the memoir to be shocking and she doesn’t mince words. She writes her father could “count his friends on no hands.” Green’s extensive footnotes provide background and context, and gently rein in Rodger’s occasionally cloudy recollections or inaccuracies. Along with gossipy stories and acerbic zingers, Rodgers explores being a woman, a single mom and Jewish in a time when those traits signaled outsider and usually held a person back. She shares both successes (her musical Once Upon a Mattress; YA novel Freaky Friday; philanthropy, motherhood) and low points (friction in relationships, sour business deals, the death of a son). She admits her own mistakes and points out the shortcomings of others along the way.