Where else would Frank Sinatra's latest biographer want to spend ol' Blue Eyes' 95th birthday? On Sunday, Dec. 12, James Kaplan, author of Frank: The Voice, will visit the Hoboken Historical Museum at 4 p.m. for a reading from the first volume of his new biography of one of the most original voices of the 20th century. The event is free.
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| Author James Kaplan |
According to the publisher, in "The Voice," Kaplan reveals the complex psyche and turbulent life behind that incomparable vocal instrument. "We relive the years 1915 to 1954 in glistening detail, experiencing as if for the first time Sinatra’s journey from the streets of Hoboken, his fall from the apex of celebrity, and his 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.Kaplan has also written or co-written biographies of John McEnroe, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, two novels and hundreds of profiles of major figures for magazines including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vanity Fair and Esquire.
PLUS...To kick off the holiday season, the Museum is hosting two musical events, open to all:
On Sun., Dec. 5, at 4 p.m., join us for our Annual Holiday Family Concert, located this year in the Shipyard Playroom (SE corner of Shipyard Park). Dave Lambert (right) and Howard Olah-Reiken return to perform festive renditions of holiday favorites and lead singalongs. Admission is $5 per family.
Caroling with St. Dominic's Women's Choir, Dec. 15
The St. Dominic's Academy Women's choir will once again lead a group of carolers throughout the Museum neighborhood spreading beautiful sounds and holiday spirits. Anyone who would like to join the singing or have the group stop by their home (within about a six-block radius of the museum) should call the Museum at 201-656-2240. The event starts from the Museum at 6:30 p.m. Participation is free, and the choir appreciates offers of holiday cheer along the way!
JAMES KAPLAN has been writing about people and ideas in business and popular culture, as well as noted fiction (Best American Short Stories), for over three decades. His essays and reviews, as well as more than a hundred major profiles of figures ranging from Madonna to Helen Gurley Brown, Calvin Klein to John Updike, Miles Davis to Meryl Streep, and Arthur Miller to Larry David, have appeared in many magazines, including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and New York. His first novel, Pearl’s Progress, was published by Knopf in 1989. His nonfiction portrait of John F. Kennedy International Airport, The Airport (1994) — called “a splendid book” by Gay Talese — was reissued in paperback in 1997 by William Morrow. His second novel, Two Guys From Verona — published in 1998 by Atlantic Monthly Press, and chosen by The New York Times as one of its Notable Books of the Year — is being developed as a movie
by Jeremy Garelick, screenwriter of The Break-Up and The Hangover, and Jeffrey Sharp, the producer of Boys Don’t Cry and You Can Count On Me. In 2002 Kaplan co-authored the autobiography of John McEnroe, You Cannot Be Serious, which was an international bestseller (and number one on the New York Times list). His 2005 book Dean and Me: A Love Story, co-written with Jerry Lewis and published by Doubleday, was a New York Times bestseller as well. In November 2010, Doubleday published Frank: The Voice, the first volume of Kaplan’s definitive biography of Frank Sinatra. James Kaplan lives in Westchester, New York, with his wife and three sons. ◦
