On Ted Gioia on the origins and evolution of jazz

1/ Here is Ted Gioia on the origins of jazz (from How to Listen to Jazz): 

“[Buddy Bolden] and the others who participated in this revolutionary movement drew on the full range of music available to them, but especially the blues. They married this blues sensibility to the rhythmic vitality of ragtime, and adapted both these idioms to the horns and other instruments available to them in turn-of-the-century New Orleans. And all of this was infused with an irreverence and willingness to break the rules that ensured that this new style wouldn’t stand still, but continue to morph and change and advance. Even today, more than a century later, we can hear all of these elements in jazz music. All of us involved in the jazz enterprise are still, unmistakably, the progeny of Buddy Bolden and his Crescent City cohorts.” 

2/ Gioia talks about the correlation between world-changing artistic revolutions and plagues, and then uses that to explain New Orleans as the birthplace for jazz. I’m not so sure about that. 
3/ The book has a chapter about the evolution of jazz styles, in which Gioia spends several pages for each subgenre explaining its context, development, characteristics, and major musicians and albums associated with it. He talks about: 
- New Orleans jazz 
- Chicago jazz 
- Harlem stride 
- Kansas city jazz 
- Big bands and the swing era 
- Bebop/ modern jazz 
- Cool jazz 
- Hard bop 
- Avant-garde/ free jazz 
- Jazz/ rock fusion 
- Classical/ world music/ jazz fusion 
- Postmodernism and neoclassical jazz 
It is fascinating to learn about the history of jazz, its development and changes over time. Gioia explains in detail and offers lots of insight.
My complaint is that he talks about cool jazz but doesn’t mention modal jazz, and talks about Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue without discussing John Coltrane. I know the jazz world is vast—some musicians I’m interested in such as Charles Mingus or Thelonious Monk are not mentioned on these pages, but John Coltrane’s among the most influential figures in jazz. It’s good that Gioia writes about him in the following chapter, “A Closer Look at Some Jazz Innovators”, but I think he deserves a bit more mention in the chapter about the evolution of jazz. Gioia doesn’t talk about Giant Steps or A Love Supreme either. 
Or maybe I’m just being a petty fangirl.  
4/ Lest it appears that I’m not happy with How to Listen to Jazz, I do like it a lot. A very good book.  
I also like that for several times in the book, Gioia attacks the banal and stupid idea that it’s all subjective. Every single debate about the arts has at least 1 philistine mindlessly repeating the platitude that nothing is better than anything and it’s all about personal taste (see the nonsense people say about Martin Scorsese’s Marvel comment?). Regarding jazz, Gioia says: 

“… this kind of deep critical listening and judgment is built on more than just personal taste, but draws on clear standards inherent in the music itself and how it has evolved. The music itself makes certain demands on the listeners, and the critic who articulates these demands has left subjectivity behind, at least to some degree”.