The new book boasts 240 photographs culled by Jacobs — who also penned the text of the hardback — from the Billy Rose Theatre Collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. "Historic Photos of Broadway," according to press notes, "offers incomparable images of the great plays and players of the 19th and 20th centuries. From long-forgotten tragedians and comedians, to the lavish musicals of the Gershwins, Cole Porter and Rodgers & Hammerstein, to the dramas of O'Neill, Miller, Inge, Williams and Albee, 'Broadway' shines through glorious, large-format photographs, many published for the first time in this volume." Expect images of the Booths, the Barrymores, the Lunts, Ethel Merman, Marlon Brando, Carol Channing and such theatres as the Lyceum, the Winter Garden and the Music Box.

Leonard Jacobs was formerly the National Theatre Editor of Back Stage and is currently the first-string critic for the New York Press and author of the blog The Clyde Fitch Report. He is a Tony voter and a member of the Drama Desk and American Theatre Critics Association; chairs the New York Innovative Theatre Awards; adjudicates scripts for the New York International Fringe Festival and the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and teaches at the National Critics Institute at the O’Neill.

"Historic Photos of Broadway: New York Theater 1850-1970" is available for $39.95 by visiting www.turnerpublishing.com.