James Kaplan has been writing about people and ideas in business and popular culture, as well as notable fiction (The Best American Short Stories), for more than three decades. His essays and reviews, as well as more than a hundred major profiles, have appeared in many magazines, including The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and New York. His novels include Pearl’s Progress and Two Guys from Verona, a New York Times Notable Book for 1998. His nonfiction works include The Airport, You Cannot Be Serious (coauthored with John McEnroe), Dean & Me: A Love Story (with Jerry Lewis), and the first volume of his definitive biography of Frank Sinatra, Frank: The Voice. He lives in Westchester, New York, with his wife and three sons.
“A biography that reads like a novel. . . . Kaplan does a nimble,
brightly evocative job of tracing the development of Sinatra’s art,
and his remarkable rise and fall and rise again.” —Michiko
Kakutani, “Top 10 Books of 2010,” The New York Times
“Fascinating, superbly written. . . . Whatever you think of
Ol’ Blue Eyes, he led an incredible life, and his adventures make
great reading. This book is biography at its best.” —The Dallas
Morning News
“Marvelously thoughtful. . . . A propulsive narrative that never
flags.” —Los Angeles Times
“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.” —Bob
Spitz, author of The Beatles
“Just when you think you know all the stories . . . along comes
James Kaplan’s Frank to tell us more. . . . Sinatra lovers will be
enthralled.” —O, The Oprah Magazine
“[Readers] will be carried along by the undeniable pleasure of
reading Kaplan’s page-after-page-turner, dense with details of
long-forgotten trysts and tiffs, career and emotional highs and
lows, movie- and record-business shenanigans. . . . A classic.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Monumental. . . . Nobody has spun the old yarns with the
raconteur’s touch and attitude that Mr. Kaplan brings to the job. .
. . Illuminates the incredible-but-true origins of a 20th-century
phenomenon.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Riveting. . . . The book does music history a huge favor by
reminding us that from his days with Tommy Dorsey to the twilight
of his Columbia years, Sinatra was a singularly incandescent vocal
phenomenon.” —Stephen Holden, The New York Times
“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
“With its neat dramatic arc, Frank: The Voice could be the template
for the ultimate Sinatra biopic.” —Newsday
“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
“Kaplan is skilled at painting a scene, and he turns readers into
‘flies on the wall.’ . . . The music comes alive.” —The Seattle
Times
“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
“A very enjoyable book that will surely enthrall Sinatra’s most
serious fans. But it will also attract a whole new generation who
will understand how the man who drove Bobbysoxers to the heights of
emotional intensity became the sound that most likely will be
considered the most important marker for the postwar era and the
beginnings of the pop music phenomenon.” —Bookreporter.com
“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
“At every step of the journey, Kaplan does a good job of capturing
what he feels is Sinatra’s fragile ego, contradictory impulses,
and—when possible—separating fact from fiction.” —The Christian
Science Monitor
“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
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