At nearly 600 pages, Fosse is certainly big, if not lithe. And Wasson's own narrative style has a jazzy, discursive and relentless energy well aligned with its subject.

'Fosse' jazzes up life of the choreographer-director

The only thing that could have been better than Sam Wasson's page-turning, comprehensively rendered biography of choreographer-director Bob Fosse would have been Fosse's own memoir.  And one imagines that Fosse, had he not died suddenly of a heart attack at age 60 in 1987, would have loved the chance to unfurl his storytelling chops given how much he coveted and envied literary talent.  But then, even close friends of Fosse's such as screenwriter Paddy Chayevsky and novelist E.L. Doctorow would have found it challenging to create a character as vivid, complex, charming, magnetic and exasperating as this lithe, limber fellow with big ideas and bigger dreams.