From one of the anonymous readers’ reviews of my Concord Sonata book:
There was a time when scholars would have dismissed an informal, personal tone for a work of scholarship, but I believe that those days are gone. Frankly, Gann has earned some license to write in whatever style he prefers. And even when the prose is technical and dense, it is a model of clarity.
It is ludicrous how difficult it has been to advance in academic circles the principle that clear, unpretentious, readable prose, even in the discussion of technical topics, is a feature, not a bug.