James Kaplan's Sinatra: The Chairman takes around a thousand pages to get us from his Academy Award for From Here To Eternity in 1954 to his death in 1998. Kaplan's previous volume, Frank: The Voice (2010), used up almost 900 pages to get us from Frank's birth in 1915 to '54. The combined 1900 pages of the two books isn't long by the standards of, say, Robert Caro and LBJ, but it's got to be a record for any singer or actor.

If some publisher eventually put both volumes in one big package, they ought to call it "Sinatra by the pound." If you ever wanted to know exactly what Frank Sinatra was doing on every single day of his life, Kaplan is your man. The Chairman is rich with fascinating detail, much of which I'd never heard. 

Read more

Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/