Most Popular Books by James Kaplan

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.

Frank Sinatra was the best-known entertainer of the twentieth century—infinitely charismatic, lionized and notorious in equal measure. But despite his mammoth fame, Sinatra the man has remained an enigma. Now James Kaplan brings deeper insight than ever before to the complex psyche and turbulent life behind that incomparable voice, from Sinatra’s humble beginning in Hoboken to his fall from grace and Oscar-winning return in From Here to Eternity. Here at last is the biographer who makes the reader feel what it was really like to be Frank Sinatra—as man, as musician, as tortured genius.

In a memoir by turns moving, tragic, and hilarious, Jerry Lewis recounts with crystal clarity every step of his fifty-year friendship with Dean Martin. They were the unlikeliest of pairs—a handsome crooner and a skinny monkey, an Italian from Steubenville, Ohio, and a Jew from Newark, N.J.. Before they teamed up, Dean Martin seemed destined for a mediocre career as a nightclub singer, and Jerry Lewis was dressing up as Carmen Miranda and miming records on stage. But the moment they got together, something clicked—something miraculous—and audiences saw it at once. Before long, they were as big as Elvis or the Beatles would be after them, creating hysteria wherever they went and grabbing an unprecedented hold over every entertainment outlet of the era: radio, television, movies, stage shows, and nightclubs. Martin and Lewis were a national craze, an American institution. The millions flowed in, seemingly without end—and then, on July 24, 1956, ten years after it all started, it ended suddenly. After that traumatic day, the two wouldn’t speak again for twenty years. And while both went on to forge triumphant individual careers—Martin as a movie and television star, recording artist, and nightclub luminary (and charter member of the Rat Pack); Lewis as the groundbreaking writer, producer, director, and star of a series of hugely successful movie comedies—their parting left a hole in the national psyche, as well as in each man’s heart. In Dean & Me, Lewis makes a convincing case for Martin as one of the great—and most underrated—comic talents of our era. But what comes across most powerfully in this definitive memoir is the depth of love Lewis felt for his partner, and which his partner felt for him: truly a love to last for all time.

From the prizewinning Jewish Lives series, a fast-moving, musically astute portrait of arguably the greatest composer of American popular music 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

“Mitchell James Kaplan [brings] his impressive knowledge of history, composition, and the heart’s whims to bear on this shining rendition of Swift and Gershwin’s star-crossed love.” —Therese Anne Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of Z and A Good Neighborhood “A lilting, jazzy ballad as catchy as a Gershwin tune…Rhapsody will have you humming, toe-tapping, and singing along with every turn of the page.” —Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Alice Network and The Huntress One evening in 1924, Katharine “Kay” Swift—the restless but loyal society wife of wealthy banker James Warburg and a serious pianist who longs for recognition—attends a concert. The piece: Rhapsody in Blue. The composer: a brilliant, elusive young musical genius named George Gershwin. Kay is transfixed, helpless to resist the magnetic pull of George’s talent, charm, and swagger. Their ten-year love affair, complicated by her conflicted loyalty to her husband and the twists and turns of her own musical career, ends only with George’s death from a brain tumor at the age of thirty-eight. Set in Jazz Age New York City, this stunning work of fiction, for fans of The Paris Wife and Loving Frank, explores the timeless bond between two brilliant, strong-willed artists. George Gershwin left behind not just a body of work unmatched in popular musical history, but a woman who loved him with all her heart, knowing all the while that he belonged not to her, but to the world.

The National Bestseller • One of The Minneapolis Star Tribune''s Best Books of the Year “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 Times From the author of the definitive biography of Frank Sinatra, the story of three towering artists—Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans—and how they came together to create the most iconic jazz album of all time, Kind of Blue In 1959, America’s great indigenous art form, jazz, reached the height of its power and popularity. James Kaplan’s magnificent 3 Shades of Blue captures how that golden era came to be, and its pinnacle with the recording of Kind of Blue. It’s a book about music, and business, and race, and heroin, and the cities that gave jazz its home, and the Black geniuses behind its rise. It’s an astonishing meditation on creativity and the strange environments where it can flourish most. It’s a book about the great forebears and founders of a lost era, and the disrupters who would take the music down truly new paths. And it’s about why the world of jazz most people know is a museum to this never-replicated period. But above all, 3 Shades of Blue is a book about three very different men—the greatness and varied fortunes of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans. The tapestry of their lives is, in Kaplan’s hands, a national odyssey with no direction home. It is also a masterpiece, a book about jazz that is as big as America.

Tides change for two male friends when they meet at their 25th high school reunion to discover one is facing death and the other one is experiencing life for the first time.

Recipient of the Independent Publishers Award for Historical Fiction (Gold Medal), the Foreword Book of the Year Award for Historical Fiction (Bronze Medal), and an honorable mention in the category of General Fiction for the Eric Hoffer Award. Luis de Santángel, chancellor to the court and longtime friend of the lusty King Ferdinand, has had enough of the Spanish Inquisition. As the power of Inquisitor General Tomás de Torquemada grows, so does the brutality of the Spanish church and the suspicion and paranoia it inspires. When a dear friend’s demise brings the violence close to home, Santángel is enraged and takes retribution into his own hands. But he is from a family of conversos, and his Jewish heritage makes him an easy target. As Santángel witnesses the horrific persecution of his loved ones, he begins slowly to reconnect with the Jewish faith his family left behind. Feeding his curiosity about his past is his growing love for Judith Migdal, a clever and beautiful Jewish woman navigating the mounting tensions in Granada. While he struggles to decide what his reputation is worth and what he can sacrifice, one man offers him a chance he thought he’d lost…the chance to hope for a better world. Christopher Columbus has plans to discover a route to paradise, and only Luis de Santángel can help him. Within the dramatic story lies a subtle, insightful examination of the crisis of faith at the heart of the Spanish Inquisition. Irresolvable conflict rages within the conversos in By Fire, By Water, torn between the religion they left behind and the conversion meant to ensure their safety. In this story of love, God, faith, and torture, fifteenth-century Spain comes to dazzling, engrossing life.

WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER From Michael Dell, renowned founder and chief executive of one of America’s largest technology companies, the inside story of the battles that defined him as a leader In 1984, soon-to-be college dropout Michael Dell hid signs of his fledgling PC business in the bathroom of his University of Texas dorm room. Almost 30 years later, at the pinnacle of his success as founder and leader of Dell Technologies, he found himself embroiled in a battle for his company’s survival. What he’d do next could ensure its legacy—or destroy it completely. Play Nice But Win is a riveting account of the three battles waged for Dell Technologies: one to launch it, one to keep it, and one to transform it. For the first time, Dell reveals the highs and lows of the company''s evolution amidst a rapidly changing industry—and his own, as he matured into the CEO it needed. With humor and humility, he recalls the mentors who showed him how to turn his passion into a business; the competitors who became friends, foes, or both; and the sharks that circled, looking for weakness. What emerges is the long-term vision underpinning his success: that technology is ultimately about people and their potential. More than an honest portrait of a leader at a crossroads, Play Nice But Win is a survival story proving that while anyone with technological insight and entrepreneurial zeal might build something great—it takes a leader to build something that lasts.

Philip Pearl, a Jewish poet from Manhattan comes to Pickett State University in Mississippi to teach. But he is the one who gets the education.

The high-profile coach who turned around the tennis careers of Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick teaches leaders how to take their teams to the top--by overcoming intense pressures and frustrating distractions.

Set in Hong Kong in 1984 and 2014, When a White Horse Is Not a Horse is a mystery that explores the secret history of the handover to China.

As news coverage raises serious questions about aircraft safety and airport security, James Kaplan offers a timely behind-the-scenes account of John F. Kennedy International Airport. The Airport: Planes, People, Triumphs, and Disasters at John F. Kennedy International achieves the impossible-it goes "inside" the sprawling J.F.K. to expose the lifeblood of a major metropolitan airport. Kaplan spoke with many of the key players within Kennedy''s city of 44,000 around-the-clock workers, including administrators, technicians, crime investigators, pilots and skycaps. He interviewed people who hold such bizarre posts as Kennedy''s notorious "Birdman" who patrols the runways for "laughing seagulls"; the leader of the "Beagle Brigade" who uses beagles to track the illegal entry of unwanted materials; and one of the airport''s medical team who must contend with airport "mules," men and women who smuggle drugs by ingesting large quantities of drug packets into their bodies. The Airport assesses the crucial role that deregulation has played in shaping today''s airline industry, producing lower fares that allow more people to fly, but in a manner that feels "progressively more inconvenient." Kaplan suggests that deregulation may have contributed to dangerous declines in maintenance and safety standards. In addition, he examines all the other elements affecting airline safety--traffic control, weather, runway maintenance, radar and other sensing equipment, pilot and flight attendant training and disaster crews. In The Airport, James Kaplan presents a panoramic, intimately detailed and highly personal view of the world of flying, and of a fabled airport''s inner life, which even the most seasoned travelers never get to see.

Luis de Santangel, chancellor to the court and longtime friend of the lusty King Ferdinand, has had enough of the Spanish Inquisition. As the power of Inquisitor General Tomas de Torquemada grows, so does the brutality of the Spanish church and the suspicion and paranoia it inspires. When a dear friend''s demise brings the violence close to home, Santangel takes retribution into his own hands, though the risk is great. Santangel is from a family of conversos, and his Jewis heritage makes him an easy target. Soon, he finds himself implicated in the murder of the first Chief Inquisitor of Aragon and in possession of a mysterious text that has spelled death for Jews for centuries. As he witnesses the horrific persecution of his loved ones, he begins slowly to reconnect with the Jewish faith his family left behind. Feeding his curiosity about his past is his growing love for Judith Migdal, a clever and beautiful Jewis woman navigating the mounting tensions in Granada. While he struggles to decide what his reputation is worth and what he can sacrifice, one man offers him a chance he thought he''d lost ... the chance to hope for a better world. Chistopher Columbus has plans to discover a route to paradise, and only Luis de Santangel can help him.

The author describes his rise to success in the world of professional tennis, his controversial on-court behavior, his marriages to actress Tatum O''Neal and pop star Patty Smyth, and his current roles as father, tennis player, and TV commentator.

Use the recipes of a vegan diet to build the body of your dreams and get the healthiest state of your life by applying the techniques and tips revealed within the book to Transition Into and Stick With the vegan lifestyleVegan diet is a plant based diet which includes all the vegetables, fruits, nuts, greens, grains and all other food obtained from plants. It is low in saturated fats and high in carbohydrates and natural sugar (fructose). Vegan diet is considered as one of the healthiest and balanced diet. Studies have shown that vegan diet or plant based diet has all the essential nutrition required by human body. There could be many reasons behind a person becoming vegan. Some reasons are related to religion, ethics and some are related to health and love for animals. We are going to see all the superfoods which provide essential nutrients in vegan diet such as fat, proteins, calcium, iron, vitamins, zinc etc. Also, how you can transition to become a vegan from your current lifestyle and stick to this healthy diet without much efforts. I am going to show some of the healthy vegan recipes which are balanced in nutrients and also filling.Don''t Wait! Scroll up and click the Buy button to take the steps towards bettering your health and your body by getting this book at a DICOUNTED price for only $9.99!

When her village in Albion is sacked by the Roman general Vespasian, young Aislin is left without home and family. Determined to exact revenge, she travels to Rome, a sprawling city of wealth, decadence, and power. A “barbarian” in a “civilized” world, Aislin struggles to comprehend Roman ways. From a precarious hand-to-mouth existence on the streets, she becomes the mistress of a wealthy senator, but their child Faolan is born with a disability that renders him unworthy of life in the eyes of his father and other Romans. Imprisoned for her efforts to topple the Roman regime, Aislin learns of an alternate philosophy from her cellmate, the Judean known today as the apostle St. Paul. As the capital burns in the Great Fire of 64 AD, he bequeaths to her a mission that will take her to Jerusalem. There, Yohanan, son of Zakkai, has been striving to preserve the tradition of Hillel against the Zealots who advocate for a war of independence. Responding to the Judeans'' revolt, the Romans--again under the leadership of Vespasian--besiege Jerusalem, destroying the Second Temple and with it, the brand of Judean monotheism it represents. Yohanan takes on the mission of preserving what can be preserved, and of re-inventing what must be reinvented. Throughout Into the Unbounded Night, Aislin''s, Faolan''s, Vespasian''s, and Yohanan''s lives intertwine in unexpected ways that shed light on colonization and its discontents, the relative values of dominant and tyrannized cultures, and the holiness of life itself--even the weakest of lives.

On ne présente pas John Mc Enroe : figure emblématique du grand boom médiatique du tennis dans les années quatre-vingt, il a été le rival historique de Bjorn Borg, et ses rapports difficiles avec son compatriote Jimmy Connors ont donné lieu à des matchs enflammés. Vainqueur de sept tournois du Grand Chelem (4 US Open, 3 Wimbledon), héros de la Coupe Davis, doté d''un toucher magique et d''un coup d''œil sans égal, il a marqué l''histoire du sport. On connaît aussi ses explosions très irlandaises, ses accès de colère qui transformaient le court en scène de spectacle. Dans Vous êtes sérieux ? il dévoile son enfance de jeune Américain moyen, ses dons rapidement découverts, son apprentissage du circuit, ses plus grands exploits, son lent déclin, sa vie d''après tennis. Chaque match est resté gravé dans sa mémoire, et ceux qui se souviennent du fameux break contre Borg lors de la finale de Wimbledon 1980 le revivront en direct et de l''intérieur, tandis que les fans pousseront un soupir en revoyant la finale de Roland Garros 1981, perdue face à un Ivan Lendl surclassé et mené deux sets à zéro... On croise Borg, Vilas, Connors, Gerulaitis, Lendl, aussi bien que Jack Nicholson, David Bowie ou Bill Clinton. Un document exceptionnel sur la vie d''un sportif de haut niveau, et un autoportrait passionné, honnête, non dépourvu pourtant de mauvaise foi : John McEnroe tel qu''en lui-même.

The authors demonstrate that American fraternal organizations played a greater role in American society than arms collectors may have been aware. The authors'' explanatory discussion and commentary, with its wealth of revealing material about these long-overlooked symbols of arms, power, and bravery-- coupled with a prodigious selection of photographic illustrations and drawings of original designs and patents for diverse variations of the swords-- should prove of interest to a broad cross-section of the collecting community. Learn how to tell rare swords from common ones. Nearly 600 swords are shown-- all arranged by organization. Includes a directory of makers, organizations and insignia.