Hamill's is a definitive introduction to Sinatra's work. Prices shown here are before your wholesale discount. In this, his first novel, rereleased on its 50th anni. Before him, that archetype did not exist in American popular culture.'' That may be true, but Hamill sets his book apart from the many others about Old Blue Eyes by tempering intelligent superlatives with the retelling of touching, revelatory moments the two men shared. 'Hamill is better known as one of our greatest chroniclers of New York City. Of this, perhaps the singer's greatest musical period, Hamill writes that Sinatra ''perfected the role of the Tender Tough Guy.

The stubborn, post-Ava Gardner heartache of Sinatra's later records, however, with their lack of self-pity, gained Sinatra a chiefly male audience. Where a starry-eyed author might vaguely praise these albums for their pathos and vulnerability, Hamill points out that, before the singer's Capitol comeback years, Sinatra's fans were almost exclusively young women. Rather, he elegantly tells the Sinatra story, dwelling on the singer's best recordings, dismissing ''the Rat Pack, the swagger, the arrogance, the growing fortune, the courtiers,'' because in the end, he writes, they are ''of little relevance.'' What matters, according to Hamill, is the music, chiefly that of Sinatra's early mature years, when the singer released his celebrated albums on the Capitol label. Pete Hamill is a novelist, journalist, editor, and screenwriter. Deeply affecting and wonderfully evocative of old New York, Snow in August is a brilliant fable for our time and all time - and another triumph for Pete. But Hamill doesn't fawn over Sinatra the way other, younger writers have recently done. Since (and immediately before) Sinatra's death in May 1998, countless tributes have been made to the singer Hamill (A Drinking Life) seems to be writing to set the record straight, for he knew Sinatra and, before that, knew the singer's music. Like a musical Elements of Style, Hamill's slim meditation on Frank Sinatra is confident, smart and seamless.

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