How to Survive a Killer Musical: Agony and Ecstasy on the Road to Broadway

When the young composer-lyricist Douglas Cohen first secured the musical rights to the novel No Way to Treat a Lady by William Goldman—the acclaimed author of The Princess Bride and Marathon Man—he hoped it would be his big break, the first step on a gilt path to artistic triumph and commercial success in the form of a hit Broadway musical.

What happened after that, while memorable, was anything but.

How to Survive a Killer Musical chronicles Cohen's decade-long quest to bring that musical to...