In this unique tribute, veteran journalist and award-winning author Pete Hamill remembers Frank Sinatra. Drawing upon intimate conversations over the course of many years, Hamill evokes the essence of Sinatra — examining his art and his legend from the inside. Shaped by Prohibition, the Depression, and war, Sinatra became the troubadour of urban loneliness; he was one of the few artists of the twentieth century to break through an ethnic parochialism that imprisoned so many of the turn-of-the-century immigrants and their children. With his songs, he enabled millions of others to tell their own stories, thus providing an entire generation with a sense of tradition and pride belonging distinctly to them.
Produts of the same urban landscape, both Hamill and Sinatra can be credited with giving the American city a voice. Hamill writes with infused introspection about the cultural importance of legends in young lives and how the myths and heroes of youth urged a generation to greatness. For Hamill, Sinatra is such a story. Bound up in the history and climate of a younger, and in many ways tougher America, Sinatra at once represents loyalty, remorse, humility, strength and success. This is a rich and touching portrait that lingers like a beautiful song.
