Search results for ""author james kaplan""

1959 saw Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the other members of Miles''s sextet come together to record the seminal jazz album of all time Kind of Blue. 3 Shades of Blue is a magnificent, blended biography on the meandering paths which led Miles, Coltrane and Evans to the mountaintop of 1959 and the aftermath. It''s a book about music, business, race, addiction and the cities that gave jazz its home; from New York and LA to Philadelphia, Chicago and Kansas City. Kaplan meditates on creativity and the great forebears of this golden age who would take the music down strange new paths. Above all, this is a book about three very different men - their struggles, their choices, their tragedies, their greatness. The tapestry of their lives is, in Kaplan''s hands, an American Odyssey, with no direction home.

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Highly acclaimed on its publication and selected by The New York Times as a Notable Book of the Year, Two Guys from Verona is a rare breed of novel, striking a powerful chord across the nation and making James Kaplan the unexpected voice of a generation. It's the fall of 1999 in the plush New Jersey suburbs, and Will and Joel are fortyish, friends since the second grade. Will is a successful, tired cardboard salesman with a mortgage, a pretty wife, and 2.2 kids. Joel lives with his moth and works at a sub shop. Joel's favorite pastime is cruising the dark streets in his rusted-out '74 Chevy, drinking whiskey from a brown paper bag. Will feels sorry for Joel. And Joel feels sorry for Will. But their twenty-fifth high school reunion will change both their lives in ways neither has dreamed of - one facing death, the other facing life for the first time. "A bittersweet elegy for what, not too long ago, looked like a spanking new American version of the promised land." - The New York Times Book Review

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From the prizewinning Jewish Lives series: a fast‑moving, musically astute portrait of Irving Berlin, arguably the greatest composer of American popular music"An extensively researched, entertaining, and nuanced account that contextualizes Berlin’s story and achievements within the scope of Jewish immigrant New York and modern American popular culture."—Library Journal Irving Berlin (1888–1989) has been called—by George Gershwin, among others—the greatest songwriter of the golden age of the American popular song. “Berlin has no place in American music,” legendary composer Jerome Kern wrote; “he is American music.” In a career that spanned an astonishing nine decades, Berlin wrote some fifteen hundred tunes, including “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” “God Bless America,” and “White Christmas.” From ragtime to the rock era, Berlin’s work has endured in the very fiber of American national identity. Exploring the interplay of Berlin’s life with the life of New York City, noted biographer James Kaplan offers a visceral narrative of Berlin as self‑made man and witty, wily, tough Jewish immigrant. This fast‑paced, musically opinionated biography uncovers Berlin’s unique brilliance as a composer of music and lyrics. Masterfully written and psychologically penetrating, Kaplan’s book underscores Berlin’s continued relevance in American popular culture.About Jewish Lives: Jewish Lives is a prizewinning series of interpretative biography designed to explore the many facets of Jewish identity. Individual volumes illuminate the imprint of Jewish figures upon literature, religion, philosophy, politics, cultural and economic life, and the arts and sciences. Subjects are paired with authors to elicit lively, deeply informed books that explore the range and depth of the Jewish experience from antiquity to the present. In 2014, the Jewish Book Council named Jewish Lives the winner of its Jewish Book of the Year Award, the first series ever to receive this award.More praise for Jewish Lives: “Excellent.” – New York times “Exemplary.” – Wall St. Journal “Distinguished.” – New Yorker “Superb.” – The Guardian

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The national bestseller!“A superb book...[Kaplan is] a master biographer, a dogged researcher and shaper of narrative, and this is his most ambitious book to date.” —Los Angeles TimesFrom the author of the definitive biography of Frank Sinatra, the story of how jazz arrived at the pinnacle of American culture in 1959, told through the journey of three towering artists—Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans—who came together to create the most iconic jazz album of all time, Kind of BlueThe myth of the ’60s depends on the 1950s being the “before times” of conformity, segregation, straightness—The Lonely Crowd and The Organization Man. This all carries some truth, but it does nothing to explain how, in 1959, America’s great indigenous art form, jazz, reached the height of its power and popularity, thanks to a number of Black geniuses so legendary they go by one n

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'At last, Sinatra has the biography he deserves' - The Irish TimesFrank Sinatra was the best-known entertainer of his century - infinitely charismatic, more legendary and notorious than any other public personality of his era. But no matter what you think, you don't know him.In this critically acclaimed biography, James Kaplan reveals how Sinatra made listening to pop music a more personal experience than it had ever been. We relive the years 1915 to 1954 in vibrant detail, experiencing as if for the first time Sinatra's journey from the streets of Hoboken, his fall from the summit of celebrity, and his Oscar-winning return in From Here to Eternity. Here is the book that, finally, gets under his skin.

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