Frank Sinatra

'I have known and admired Spencer Leigh's work as a music historian for many years. When he describes music and musicians of a bygone age, we become aware of so much more than the songs and performers - the era itself returns to life and we are reminded that all art, notably popular art, is inspired by, and inseparable from, its time and place, and if we don't understand that background, the story is far from complete... In Spencer Leigh's mammoth and wonderful tome on Frank Sinatra, he has superbly given us Americana through the long life and career of his subject which began way before his did. Sinatra's agents, lovers, dodgy associates, show biz friends and enemies, passions, hatreds, bravery and recklessness, finesse and crudity, worldly wisdom and naivete, are all part of the complex all and Leigh captures them all. Whether there has been a better telling of the Frank Sinatra story than Spencer Leigh's version only someone who has read all the myriad other attempts can say. I can say for sure that after reading FRANK SINATRA: AN EXTRAORDINARY LIFE you may want to read more about him, but you won't need to.' SIR TIM RICE; 'There will be no better book on Sinatra's career than this. The detail is superb. It was wise to embrace it all - the music, the films, the politics, the hoodlum exploits, the cheating and chancing, and the seemingly endless sex and booze.' LIVERPOOL ECHO