An inexpensive, ideal Christmas gift, this book is intended to be read while listening to Handel's MESSIAH. It's small enough to be easily portable to a live setting, and short enough to be a very accessible companion piece while listening to a recording. Subtitled as "didactic" and "meditative," the book is didactic in that it teaches both musicological and theological aspects of Handel's great oratorio; the book is meditative in that the author...