Synopses & Reviews
Bestselling author James Kaplan redefines Frank Sinatra in a triumphant new biography that includes many rarely seen photographs.
Frank Sinatra was the best-known entertainer of the twentieth century — infinitely charismatic, lionized and notorious in equal measure. But despite his mammoth fame, Sinatra the man has remained an enigma. As Bob Spitz did with the Beatles, Tina Brown for Diana, and Peter Guralnick for Elvis, James Kaplan goes behind the legend and hype to bring alive a force that changed popular culture in fundamental ways.
Sinatra endowed the songs he sang with the explosive conflict of his own personality. He also made the very act of listening to pop music a more personal experience than it had ever been. In Frank: The Voice, Kaplan reveals how he did it, bringing deeper insight than ever before to the complex psyche and turbulent life behind that incomparable vocal instrument. We relive the years 1915 to 1954 in glistening detail, experiencing as if for the first time Sinatra's journey from the streets of Hoboken, his fall from the apex of celebrity, and his Oscar-winning return in From Here to Eternity. Here at last is the biographer who makes the reader feel what it was really like to be Frank Sinatra — as man, as musician, as tortured genius.
Review
"Fascinating.... For anyone who wants to know what popular culture and celebrity felt like around the middle of the twentieth century, this book is the new bible." Booklist
Review
“The answer to 'what is there left to say about Sinatra' is staggeringly answered in James Kaplan's new book. This story has never been told with such incisiveness, care, research and respect. With so many new revelations, you might never really know who Frank Sinatra is until you read this book.” Michael Feinstein
Review
“Jim Kaplan’s great gift is his own voice, in peak form — stylish, seductive, and richly resonant — that stands up to Sinatra’s powerful baritone. This is a perceptive, passionate biography of an immense and immensely flawed musical figure whose life and legend continue to fascinate.” Bob Spitz, author of The Beatles
Review
“This is biography at its very best — the story of a fascinating character brought to life as never before through superb writing, impeccable research and penetrating insight. It is a terrific book.” Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals
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“Sinatra was to 20th Century stagecraft what Churchill was to statecraft: the towering presence of the age. In this lyrical narrative, suffused with a mastery of popular culture, Frank is back — this time as a major figure in American history.” Jonathan Alter, author of The Promise: President Obama, Year One
Review
“James Kaplan succeeds not just in bringing Frank Sinatra alive in all his complexity, but in revealing in detail how he consciously, deliberately, and painstakingly transformed himself into a triumphantly successful entertainer and a national icon.” Michael Korda, author of Ike
Review
“At long last, we have a biography of Sinatra worthy of the man...a pop innovator whose influence remains incalculable, whose art remains undiminished. James Kaplan tells this story with the authority of a writer who inhabits his subject from deep inside. The pages fly by on the wings of song.” Gary Giddins, author of Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams and Warning Shadows
Synopsis
Bestselling author Kaplan redefines Frank Sinatra in a triumphant new biography that includes many rarely seen photographs. He reveals Sinatra as man, as a musician, and as a tortured genius.
Synopsis
Few male stars in any medium carried a visual punch like Frank Sinatra. Photographs capture not only his ineffable sense of style, but also his aura of vulnerability, intensity, sexuality, and charm. Sinatra: The Photographs focuses on the decades after the war, when he towered over the American entertainment landscape. These were the years of the Rat Pack and Las Vegas, socializing with Jack Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, and making music with Nelson Riddle, Count Basie, and Quincy Jones. Featured is the best work by a group of photographers who helped shape the public image of Sinatra: Ted Allan, Bob Willoughby, Ed Thrasher, Sid Avery, and Bernie Abramson. Photographs by these men form the nucleus of the images gathered in this book, which are accompanied by illuminating commentary on Sinatra by the people who knew him best.
Synopsis
In the hands of a seasoned, tenacious biographer, the evolution of one of the century's most controversial and successful women becomes nothing less than the enthralling saga of a mythic American life.
About the Author
James Kaplan is a novelist and nonfiction writer whose essays, reviews, and profiles have appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and New York. He coauthored John McEnroe's autobiography, You Cannot Be Serious, a number-one New York Times bestseller, and coauthored the bestselling Dean and Me with Jerry Lewis. He lives in Westchester, New York, with his wife and three sons.