Sinatra: The Life

About this book

From the best-selling author of Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe the first fully documented comprehensively researched birth-to-death biographythe definitive lifeof Frank Sinatra. Sinatra is the story of an American icon who held the imagination of millions for more than fifty years and whose influence in popular music was unsurpassed in the twentieth century. As a child he said he had heard symphonies from the universe in his head. No one could have imagined where those sounds would lead him. Tracing the arc of this incredible life from the humble beginnings in Hoboken to the twilight years as a living legend in Malibu Sinatra follows a career built on raw talent sheer willpowerand criminal connections. Drawing on a treasure trove of documents and interviews Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan reveal stunning new information about Sinatras links to such Mafia figures as Sam Giancana and Lucky Luciano. And we see for the first time where the Mafia connection began how and why it lasted and how it impinged on others not least President John F. Kennedy. Here too is the core of the private Sinatraalternately caustic and sympatheticthat the singer so long concealed. The heartbreaking truth about his passion for Ava Gardner emerges from never-before-published conversations with Gardner herself. In exclusive intimate interviews the women who loved Sinatrasome of them unknown to the public until nowshare memories of the joy and pain of their relationships with him. And we learn what it was like to be the friend of a man who was generous and loyal to a fault yetas some of his fellow Rat Packers discoveredwho could turn abruptly into a vindictive brute. Dramatic eye-opening and unfailingly fair-minded Sinatra is masterful biography: the revelatory story of a brilliant artist and an infinitely complex man.