Sinatra

Starred review from September 21, 2015
The great singer-actor contains multitudes in this vast, engrossing biography of Frank Sinatra’s mature years. Completing his bestselling Frank: The Voice, Kaplan follows the 17-year span from Sinatra’s Oscar-winning role in 1954’s From Here to Eternity to his (first) retirement in 1971, a period when he was a commanding Hollywood star and the acknowledged master of the American songbook. Kaplan delves with gusto into Sinatra’s seething contradictions: swagger and insecurity; sensitivity and callousness; deep loneliness amid a perpetual throng of cronies; an omnivorous sexual appetite that encompassed polar opposites Ava Gardner and Mia Farrow; lordly generosity combined with tyrannical control and a violent compulsion to push people around (most memorably when, while dressed as an Native American woman at a benefit event, he got in a shoving match with a cowboy-costumed John Wayne and then, to work off his anger, had a bodyguard beat up a parking attendant). Kaplan’s sympathetic but unflinching narrative revels in the entertainer’s scandalous private life while offering rapt, insightful appreciations of his sublime recording and stage performances. It situates him and his Rat Pack at the Vegas headquarters of a postwar American culture that yoked mobsters and prostitutes to Kennedys and other luminaries. His Sinatra is often appalling, sometimes inspiring, and always a fascinating icon of an energetic, resonant, yet doomed style of masculinity. Photos.

Starred review from October 1, 2015
The meatiness of the material justifies the length of the author's second (and concluding) volume of his biography of Frank Sinatra (1915-1998). Just as his subject matured into a far more compelling artist than the one who had elicited squeals from bobby-soxers, the follow-up to Kaplan's Frank: The Voice (2010) is far more substantial than that initial volume. Where the biographer subjected the early Sinatra to plenty of psychobabble]lots of mommy issues]and purple prose (particularly steamy with Ava Gardner), the story that begins with his mid-1950s resurgence sustains its own narrative momentum with the author generally staying out of the way. The allure of Gardner remains, long after their short-lived marriage, but Sinatra has grown in accomplishment (and reader interest) as a recording artist, an actor, a Nevada tycoon, a record-label mogul, and a controversial public figure. His pals at the time included future president John F. Kennedy and Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana]as well as the notorious Judith Campbell Exner, who was involved with all three]and Kaplan nimbly imagines the negotiations of power and influence, as Kennedy ultimately froze Sinatra out and Giancana threatened his life. The author explores the ambivalence of Sinatra's relationships with Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. and his propensity toward both public boorishness and private benevolence, and he illuminates his "astonishingly intimate singing, created in the one place where Frank Sinatra was capable of creating intimacy." Kaplan still displays pulpy flashes, in his evocation of how Sinatra and Mia Farrow "began to explore the strange new territory of each other" and "were a strange hybrid, this May-September pair, holding hands over a chasm, trying to stay together in spite of everything." Refusing to take sides between Sinatra's widow and his progeny, Kaplan treats the final years of Sinatra's life in comparatively perfunctory fashion. But most of the rest provides a riveting story, strong enough to stand on its own without a lot of authorial embellishment. An appropriately big book for an oversized artistic presence.

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from November 1, 2015
It would be easy to label Kaplan's massive two-volume biography of Frank Sinatrathis second volume checks in at 992 pages, following the 786-page first installment, Frank: The Voice (2010)as an example of massive overkill, but such an assessment would miss the mark entirely. This is not one of those documentary-style biographies in which the fawning author records what his subject had for breakfast every day of his or her life; rather, it is a remarkably insightful, gracefully, often eloquently written history of popular music and celebrity culture in twentieth-century Americaall viewed through the lens of an iconic singer and undervalued actor whose wildly contradictory personality and tempestuous personal life built the legend but detracted from the man's genius as an artist. It really was a two-act life, and Kaplan divides his volumes perfectly, ending the opening act with Sinatra's Supporting Actor Oscar for From Here to Eternity in 1954, and following in the second act with the story of Sinatra as Chairman of the Board, an alternately triumphant and tragic account of sublime artistic achievement, grossly excessive displays of arrogance, and, inevitably, personal and professional decline. Yes, these were the years of the Rat Pack, and Kaplan nicely separates the truth from the legend, reminding us that there were really two Packs, the first, led by Bogie and Bacall, with Sinatra as a mere member, and the second, the Frank-Dino-Sammy version, the ring-a ding-ding years that went on far too long, eventually becoming an offensive minstrel show, but that, in the beginning, embodied Hollywood's most elemental myth, its deepest unspoken appealthat as its final reward, fame offered a life without rules. And, yes, these were the Vegas years and the Mob years, where Sinatra arrogantly denied his association with all variety of Mafioso, Sam Giancana at the forefront. Again, Kaplan carefully sorts through the evidencemountains of itand concludes convincingly that while Frank was no mobster, he loved to be around them, basking in the power they exuded. Sinatra's second act, Kaplan emphasizes, is a study in the use and misuse of powerand it wasn't all misuse. Showing terrific chops as a music critic, Kaplan offers an in-depth appreciation of Sinatra's wonderful Capitol years and his collaboration with arranger Nelson Riddle. Drawing on interviews with those who were in the recording studio, Kaplan shows in vivid detail how Sinatra used his unrivaled clout as a star to produce a series of albums that redefined what popular music could be. Concept albums like Only the Lonely and Songs for Swingin' Lovers! displayed the potential of a relatively new technology, the long-playing record. The records weren't just a smash with would-be swingin' lovers; hipsters were listening, too. Sinatra always saw himself as a jazz singer, and so did the great jazzmen of the day, including Lester Prez Young, who said simply, My main man is Frank Sinatra. Kaplan perfectly sums up this tribute with the words, No one was hipper than Prez, and no praise could be higher. Fortunately, Prez wasn't around for Sinatra's sad coda, the tours at the end where his voice was mostly gone and he couldn't remember lyrics. As astute in his psychological analysis as in his music criticism, Kaplan makes sense of the singer's insistence on taking way too many encores by noting Sinatra's need for constant movement: He was like a whole body case of restless leg syndrome. That restlessness finally shook itself out, but, along the way, it drove a skinny kid from Hoboken to live a life that, as Kaplan concludes, touched almost every aspect of American culture in the twentieth century....

October 15, 2015

Following Frank: The Voice, this second volume of Kaplan's extensive biography picks up in 1954 after Frank Sinatra won his career-reviving Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1953's From Here to Eternity. Kaplan's writing is informative yet conversational and reveals Sinatra's personality by his reactions to people as wide-ranging as Jack Kennedy, Sam Giancana, Ava Gardner, Axel Stordhal, and the many women who filled his life. Sinatra was a man of contradictions, balancing an external arrogance with barely contained insecurity and emotional missteps. Kaplan's prose neither condemns nor praises his subject. The only criticism is that this 1,000-page book devotes few pages to the final 28 years of the singer's life. Despite his "retirement" in 1971, Sinatra appeared on stage and screen extensively between 1973 and his death in 1998. VERDICT This volume completes an impressive biography of Sinatra that currently stands as the most thorough examination of his life. For all libraries and fans of Sinatra. [See Prepub Alert, 4/6/15.]--Peter Thornell, Hingham P.L., MA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2015

Kaplan follows up his 2010 best-selling Frank: The Voice, with Sinatra coming out grabbing the little gold statue as best supporting actor in From Here to Eternity and going on to reinvigorate his entire career.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2015

Without the leadership of George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, the newly independent United States would have disintegrated. Ellis (emeritus, history, Mt. Holyoke Coll.; Founding Brothers) convincingly argues that this quartet of nationalists spearheaded a second, more profound follow-up revolution within six years of the Revolutionary War. The first was to win independence from a tyrannical, monarchial overlord. The second revolution expanded the first by creating a new nation-state from a confederation of 13 sovereignties. This quartet of political elites from Virginia and New York orchestrated the dramatic transformation of the postwar constitution from a confederation of sovereign states to a nation-sized republic, the largest ever attempted in history. Each man performed a role for which he was naturally suited in diagnosing the systemic flaws of the Articles of Confederation; maneuvering through the political process to assemble the Convention of 1787-88; steering the agenda toward creating a national government; influencing, with limited success, the outcomes of state ratifying conventions; and ensuring state compliance with a promised Bill of Rights. VERDICT Drawing extensively on primary sources, this work will appeal to anyone who is interested in the political dimension in creating the American republic and in interpreting the "original intent" of this political elite. [See Prepub Alert, 11/3/14.]--Glen Edward Taul, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.