Mad Music: Charles the Nostalgic Rebel. By Stephen Budiansky. Leba - non, NH: ForeEdge, 2014. [306 p. ISBN 9781611683998 (hardcover), $40; ISBN 9781611685145 (e-book), $34.99.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index.The fourth word of Stephen Budiansky's new Charles Ives biography is diabetes. Fittingly so, since that disease is the centerpiece of the significant new information that is touted in the book's publicity blurbs and that colors the final three chapters of Budiansky's highly enjoyable book. Nearly two thirds of the way through the biography, he presents a compelling case that Ives's collapse of 1 October 1918, which spurred his long, slow decline in artistic output, was a result of atypical adult-onset diabetes, and not the intentionally misleading excuse of a heart attack that Ives, his family, and most of his biographers perpetuated (p. 171). Budiansky presents this information, as he did in an earlier scholarly article that details Ives's diabetes thoroughly, as a grand revelation (Stephen Budiansky, Ives, Diabetes, and His 'Ex - hausted Vein' of Composition, American Music 31, no. 1 [Spring 2013]: 1-25). In - deed, in the way that he frames the narrative, reaching the end of this chapter felt like the conclusion of a particularly tension-filled section of a detective story, with an attendant sense of relief and wonderment that finally the case was solved.Refreshingly accessible while maintaining an impressive level of scholarship, it is this focused and taut storytelling ability that makes Budiansky's book a welcome addition to the already crowded field of Ives biography. His prose lends a populist air to the iconoclastic composer, and Ives's personality, even at his thorniest or most eccentric, seems much more alive and relatable in Budiansky's handling.In short, Mad Music is a fun read. Part of this is due, no doubt, to the streamlined tightness of the narrative, and much of that is due to the omission of any detailed analysis of Ives's music, or its compositional or performance history. While this is the source of the book's strength, it is also a serious weakness, as readers interested in the details of a piece's conception and performance history will need to turn to the much more minutely detailed Jan Swafford biography (Charles Ives: A Life with Music [New York: Norton, 1996]), or the comprehensive reference work assembled by James B. Sinclair (A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music of Charles Ives [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999]).An introductory chapter (Dissonance Is Like a Man) profiles some of the mad (in the sense of both angry and eccentric) and rebellious aspects of Ives's character mentioned in the book's title. The remaining chapters each examine a specific phase of Ives's life, yet music only comprises a few sections of each chapter. Instead, much of the story contextualizes the complex social and personal forces that led Ives to live as he did, while a fair amount of space is given to detailing the world of life insurance and Ives's business activities as well. This adds to the overall aura of being immersed in Ives's world. For instance, chapter 5 (Damn Rot and Worse) explores the idea of sacralization in American culture, which provides the backdrop for rationalizing Ives's decision to abandon being a professional musician after the tepid reception of his cantata The Celestial Country in 1902. Ives decided that he would no longer succumb to the demands of genteel society, or as Budiansky wryly writes, he had tried to sell out-and found no takers (p. 101).Budiansky is not a musicologist, yet this does not prevent him from writing with authority about the music, with occasional appropriate discussions of pitch, rhythm, texture, and other technical elements (and, interestingly for a general readership imprint, a number of simple music examples). His descriptions of Ives's music, often just a small segment from one or two pieces per chapter, are wonderfully evocative, demonstrating the ease with which he is able to distill complex musical ideas into simple but powerful prose suitable for a general reader and refreshing for aca - demics. …