Overview

In this companion book to the award-winning biography Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams; The Early Years, 1903-1940, Gary Giddins presents the second volume of his masterful work. Bing Crosby dominated American popular culture in a way that few artists ever have. From the dizzying era of Prohibition through the dark days of the Second World War, he was a desperate nation's most beloved entertainer. But he was more than just a charismatic crooner: Bing Crosby redefined the very foundations of modern music, from the way it was recorded to the way it was orchestrated and performed. In this much-anticipated follow-up to the universally acclaimed first volume, acclaimed music critic Gary Giddins now focuses on Crosby's most memorable period, the war years and the origin story of White Christmas. Set against the backdrop of a Europe on the brink of collapse, this groundbreaking work traces Crosby's skyrocketing career as he fully inhabits a new era of American entertainment and culture. While he would go on to reshape both popular music and cinema more comprehensively than any other artist, Crosby's legacy would be forever intertwined with his impact on the home front, a unifying voice for a nation at war. Over a decade in the making and drawing on hundreds of interviews and unprecedented access to numerous archives, Giddins brings Bing Crosby, his work, and his world to vivid life--firmly reclaiming Crosby's central role in American cultural history.

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Reviews

[Giddins] magnifies six years that confirm Crosby's primacy among the searchlights of American music and identity. -- Downbeat Magazine Giddins lays his findings out with impressive clarity...His scholarship and thoroughness earn the highest marks. -- New York Times Book Review Scintillating...Packs exhaustive research and detail into his sprawling narrative while keeping the prose relaxed and vivid...Giddins's engrossing show-biz bio richly recreates the popular culture he helped define. -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) Someone has to make the case for Crosby's historical importance--and fortunately for Bing, Gary Giddins has taken up the gauntlet with surprising vehemence. Mr. Giddins is one of the leading music critics of the last half-century. -- Wall Street Journal The author impressively maintains a balanced view of Crosby's complex character...A deeply researched and thoroughly engrossing biography that confirms Crosby's essential role in the history of American music and film. -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) The brilliance of Giddins' work: he makes us see how, in a very different time, Crosby's easy going, waggish style was just what the country craved, on records and radio, at the movies, and in person. Tony Bennett may have said it best: Bing taught everyone to relax. -- Booklist (starred review) Worth the wait...[An] evocative portrait of a man and a historical moment. -- Washington Post

"[Giddins] magnifies six years that confirm Crosby's primacy among the searchlights of American music and identity. -- ""Downbeat Magazine"" Giddins lays his findings out with impressive clarity...His scholarship and thoroughness earn the highest marks. -- ""New York Times Book Review"" Scintillating...Packs exhaustive research and detail into his sprawling narrative while keeping the prose relaxed and vivid...Giddins's engrossing show-biz bio richly recreates the popular culture he helped define. -- ""Publishers Weekly (starred review)"" Someone has to make the case for Crosby's historical importance--and fortunately for Bing, Gary Giddins has taken up the gauntlet with surprising vehemence. Mr. Giddins is one of the leading music critics of the last half-century. -- ""Wall Street Journal"" The author impressively maintains a balanced view of Crosby's complex character...A deeply researched and thoroughly engrossing biography that confirms Crosby's essential role in the history of American music and film. -- ""Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"" The brilliance of Giddins' work: he makes us see how, in a very different time, Crosby's easy going, waggish style was just what the country craved, on records and radio, at the movies, and in person. Tony Bennett may have said it best: Bing taught everyone to relax. -- ""Booklist (starred review)"" Worth the wait...[An] evocative portrait of a man and a historical moment. -- ""Washington Post"""

Author Information

"Gary Giddins was a long-time columnist for the Village Voice and is a preeminent jazz critic who received the 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award, the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award, and the Bell Atlantic Award for Visions of Jazz: The First Century. His other books include Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams--The Early Years, 1903-1940, which won the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award and the ARSC Award for Excellence in Historical Sound Research; Weatherbird: Jazz at the Dawn of Its Second Century; Faces in the Crowd; Natural Selection; and biographies of Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. He has won an unparalleled six ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Peabody Award in Broadcasting. Grover Gardner is an award-winning narrator with over a thousand titles to his credit. Named one of the ""Best Voices of the Century"" and a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, he has won three prestigious Audie Awards, was chosen Narrator of the Year for 2005 by Publishers Weekly, and has earned more than thirty Earphones Awards."

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