Why does such a scholarly book, intended for a whole semester of use, have to be in fall-apart paperback. Barely a few days into this book's life pages were falling out. I've had to re-glue several already, and I've had this book only since January this year. Open the book normally a few times and at least one page has come unglued. I'm going to have to see a book binder about a way to save this book.I realize this review about the physical book, if review is what we shall call it, isn't helpful, since readers of a review want to know if a book is worth purchasing, so I should say something about its contents. The authors' use of the rhythms of prosody is extremely helpful to someone looking for solid reasons for the phrasing of a passage and to understand the inter-relations of phrases and therefore the structure of a long stretch of music, even a whole piece of music, through the architectonic analysis techniques furnished by the authors. Understanding rhythmic structure as taught in this book, a musician can reliably produce a musical performance that can affect an audience the way it should. I regard this book' insights as indispensable for the music I play.With just about any other book that fell apart like this one has been doing, I wouldn't bother struggling to keep it together. With this one, every page is precious, and the effort to keep it together is worth it.