The September 5, 2009, issue of The Wall Street Journal featured a glowing review of Walter Rimler’s George Gershwin: An Intimate Portrait.

“More thorough biographies than Mr. Rimler’s slender ­volume exist—Edward Jablonski’s Gershwin at 436 pages, Howard Pollack’s George Gershwin: His Life and Work weighing in at 882 pages—but for those of us ­interested less in the technical details of Gershwin’s music and its performance than in the comet called George ­Gershwin that blazed briefly across American skies, Mr. Rimler is the astronomer of choice. He writes well, is ­quietly authoritative (he is also the author of The Gershwin Companion) and, while discriminating in his selection of details, never loses the larger subject, which is the trajectory of George Gershwin’s extraordinary life.”