Sinatra
The Life
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- 12,99 €
Descrição da editora
In 1941, at age twenty-five, Sinatra told a friend, 'I'm going to be the best singer in the world'. Two years on, the bobbysoxers were already weeping and screaming for him in their thousands. Half a century on Bono defined him as 'the Big Bang of popular music'. 'To hell with the calendar,' a music critic wrote before his death in 1998, 'The day Frank Sinatra dies, the twentieth century is over.'
There have been many books about Sinatra, but the last comprehensive biography was Kitty Kelly's HIS WAY, published in 1986. it has taken renowned biographer Anthony Summers years to research this new biography, which promises to be the definitive story of a musical and film career spanning six decades. In this massively documented book, meticulous investigation is coupled with sensitivity to examine every aspect of Sinatra's life, public and private, from his obscure beginnings in an immigrant neighborhood in Jersey City to his twilight years as a living legend in Palm Springs. It tells the human story of an American icon who was irresistible to women and who was plagued throughout his life by scandal and hints of links with the Mafia. In this book, Summers finally uncovers the whole truth.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The second collaboration for the husband-and-wife team (after their Nixon bio, The Arrogance of Power) is hardly the first book about Frank Sinatra, and despite their claim to be the only objective biographers to address the crooner's final years, the book's later chapters feel rushed compared with the lengthy passages covering Sinatra's well-trod glory days. Furthermore, since Sinatra's musical genius and acting skills have been thoroughly analyzed by previous writers, Summers and Swan put in minimal effort there. Where their work does stand out is in firming up the evidence of organized crime's "continuing interest" in Sinatra, from affirming that the famous scene in The Godfather only slightly exaggerates how he got his breakthrough role in From Here to Eternity to exploring his possible role as a go-between for the mob and John F. Kennedy. The pair also break new ground in depicting what they describe as Sinatra's alcoholism, pointing out that he frequently drank all night long, and his abusive treatment of women, for which they cite cases. Yet even when the authors say Sinatra raped a woman or fathered another woman's child out of wedlock and they make good cases for both their delivery is a lot closer to objective biography than tabloid sensationalism. A&E's airing of a linked documentary, timed to coincide with the book's publication, as well as a first serial in Vanity Fair, will create significant interest in this latest Sinatra saga. 32 pages of photos.
