You don’t change the world by being even-handed and balanced. Kerman’s view of musicology verged on highly personal one; his characterization of theory and analysis was something of a caricature, and his account of Schenkerian analysis verged on travesty. Nevertheless, people working in all areas of the discipline devoured Kerman’s book greedily, not just to see what (if anything) Kerman had said about them personally, but because he articulated a widely shared perception that the interface between musicology and music, between the academic discipline and the human experience, was not everything it could be.