Sinatra, James Kaplan
Sinatra, James Kaplan
List: $34.99 | Sale: $24.50
Club: $17.49

Sinatra
The Chairman

Author: James Kaplan

Narrator: Donald Corren

Unabridged: 40 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 10/27/2015


Synopsis

Just in time for the Chairman’s centennial, the endlessly absorbing sequel to James Kaplan’s bestselling Frank: The Voice—which completes the definitive biography that Frank Sinatra, justly termed the “Entertainer of the Century,” deserves and requires. Like Peter Guralnick on Elvis, Kaplan goes behind the legend to give us the man in full, in his many guises and aspects: peerless singer, (sometimes) accomplished actor, business mogul, tireless lover, and associate of the powerful and infamous.

In 2010’s Frank: The Voice, James Kaplan, in rich, distinctive, compulsively readable prose, told the story of Frank Sinatra’s meteoric rise to fame, subsequent failures, and reinvention as a star of live performance and screen. The story of “Ol’ Blue Eyes” continues with Sinatra: The Chairman, picking up the day after he claimed his Academy Award in 1954 and had reestablished himself as the top recording artist. Sinatra’s life post-Oscar was astonishing in scope and achievement and, occasionally, scandal, including immortal recordings almost too numerous to count, affairs ditto, many memorable films (and more than a few stinkers), Rat Pack hijinks that mesmerized the world with their air of masculine privilege, and an intimate involvement at the intersection of politics and organized crime that continues to shock and astound with its hubris. James Kaplan has orchestrated the wildly disparate aspects of Frank Sinatra’s life and character into an American epic—a towering achievement in biography of a stature befitting its subject.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Tosh on December 15, 2015

A horror story. I couldn't stop reading this biography, and it is over 800 and something-like pages, and it strikes me as the ultimate American tale, and as its nightmare. Frank Sinatra, without over-stating, is without a doubt a great figure in American culture. He is also a monster. Nevertheless,......more

Goodreads review by Italo on October 21, 2015

While it is tempting to look behind the façade of an artist and their work, I think it is always inadvisable. What one sees is rarely appealing, is what I've learned from experience, and that is very much the case with Frank Sinatra, who was psychologically unwell, despite being artistically excepti......more

Goodreads review by Michael on November 16, 2015

This bio, which goes from 1954 when Sinatra won an Oscar to his death, is a mixed bag. The first two-thirds are filled with interesting details about the man, his affairs, his movies and especially his music. Almost every album he made from '54 to '70 is covered in meticulous detail--occasionally it......more

Goodreads review by Brian on December 21, 2015

Exhaustive and complete, this will be the definitive Sinatra biography for years to come. What places this (and Frank: The Voice, the first volume) above all others is that it actually speaks in some depth about the artistry of Sinatra, rather than just the lurid details. What is it about these reco......more

Goodreads review by Julie on September 26, 2019

"I don’t know what other singers feel when they articulate lyrics, but being an 18-karat manic-depressive and having lived a life of violent emotional contradictions, I have an over-acute capacity for sadness as well as elation. I know what the cat who wrote the song is trying to say. I’ve been ther......more