His Way: An Unauthorized Biography Of Frank Sinatra

Book Description

This is the book Frank Sinatra failed to stop, the unauthorized biography of one of the most elusive public figures of our time. Celebrated journalist Kitty Kelley spent three years researching government documents (Mafia-related material, wiretaps and secret testimony) and interviewing more than 800 people in Sinatra's life (family, colleagues, law-enforcement officers, personal friends). Fully documented, highly detailed and filled with revealing anecdotes, here is the penetrating story of the explosively controversial and undeniably multi-talented legend who ruled the entertainment industry for more than fifty years.

Customer Reviews:

Too One-sided.......2007-10-15

I bought this book at a garage sale, and I see now why it was there. Everything in the book is negative... EVERYTHING.

If someone wanted to make a book about me, and only used the interviews of people that don't like me in their context, and only focused on all of the negative things I've done in my life, then I'd look like a terrible person, too.

Yes, Sinatra might have done those things... even all of them, but that doesn't make him a horrible person.

All in all, the book is 600 pages of one-sidedness.

A walk on the sinister side..........2007-05-02

This is a lengthy look at the shadows in Sinatra's personality, and is not the one to read if you are interested in how he developed his approach to singing so well. Frank appears to have been a victim of what we now call bipolar disorder, back in the days when no effective medications existed for it except alcohol and nicotine. He sank into scary depressions, and soared into wild bouts of manic activity, exhibited both grandiosity and generosity in excess, supported violence against his enemies and often uncritical acceptance of his friends. He grew up with a passive dad and a forceful but not likable mom, was a spoiled child who sometimes was a victim of discrimination due to his Italian heritage, and developed such an intense drive to be successful that he frequently drove away the people who might have been best for him. Upon finishing this gossipy yet apparently truthful biography, I didn't want Frank as a friend, but I didn't give away any of my dozen CD's, either. Sometimes one has to divorce the artist from the person in order to remain a fan.

Do Not Read This Book.......2006-05-31

This was evidently meant to be a commentary on the life and hates of Frank Sinatra. It was probably meant to be quite a character study - connect the dots between all the revolting facts coldly listed here and you find a revolting human being. If the dots don't quite come together, as they didn't for me, you find a rather different connotation. The solemn quote at the beginning delineates the difference between reputation and character. Ms.Kelley, being the all-knowing Author, gets right into her examination into Mr. Sinatra's character behind the reputation with a cold first chapter related in frankly impossible detail. From then on Sinatra is shown to be callous, pathetic, weak, vicious, brutal, abusive, crude, egomaniacal, vindictive, and quite possibly crazy in an overwhelming documentary that seems very fond of the two words "Sinatra screamed" and any reference to any weakness known to man that Sinatra allegedly possessed. In a cold, stark, very nearly cruel style interviews with disgruntled former employees, wives of friends, gangsters, yes-men, Hoboken tattle-tales, discarded girlfriends, two-bit comics, technicians, and the slimy Peter Lawford are all displayed in 633 pages of rot. The skeletal overview of Mr. Sinatra's life is almost frighteningly calculated - any unscrupulous writer can pick and choose to their heart's content while still remaining truthful, and Ms. Kelley could write a book about her inimitable art of relating only the least flattering information and blaming her digustingly biased view on outraged virtue.
Every character in this organized assasination, as a matter of fact, appears to be a good little human being, abused and cruelly rejected by Frank Sinatra, doing their sad duty to let the world know Sinatra done 'em wrong. Appears. Ms. Kelley apparentely agrees with them. Their sympathetically related tales are the backbone of the biography.
I have no idea how Kitty Kelley and several other Sinatra biographers are so blind that they have never been able to locate one positive Sinatra review in their life. In this book, if no bad review exists for a movie, record, concert, TV show, ect., it is either ignored or used to promote another example of bad behavior backstage. I know all the good reviews exist. I've read them, and it always surprised me because according to Kelley and other pick-and-choosers the perfomance was lousy. But this is not about a career, it's said; it's about a life. Then why mention any reviews at all?
If all the names mentioned in here actually said Sinatra was an awful person, I just might believe it. But they didn't. The uncomplimentary comments used are in any other source buried in an avalanche of rave reviews and praise. Ms.Kelley, of coure, the St. Bernard of literature, sniffed them out. Ava Gardner's autobiography paints a very different portrait of what she felt about Mr.Sinatra than the few harsh statements here. Lauren Bacall's "By Myself" is so often negatively interpreted it's ridiculous, and Ms. Kelley joins the long line of misinterpreters. Rare comments by Frank Sinatra Jr., Sammy Davis and others are gleefully repeated, despite the fact that their opinions about Mr.Sinatra are almost always positive to the extreme. No famous friends of his were interviewed, simply because people who genuinely loved him went as high as the summit of upper-class Hollywood, nobility, and the White House, and that was the type of thing Kelley wanted least. I read an interview in which Ms. Kelley supposedly said she didn't find Sinatra appealing because he had no sense of humor. Ha. There has never been anyone with as little humor about them as Ms.Kitty Kelley, executioner of reputation, fabricater of character. The sense of smug gloating, the nasty smirking of the authoress over Mr.Sinatra's discomfort at having so many people read this trash and BELIEVE it, is the only humor evident, and that makes me sick. Even if every statement were true, I'd still have a certain sympathy for Frank Sinatra, because, as it eventually becomes clear, you learn less than nothing about what Sinatra was really like, but you learn a great deal about the writer. The Sinatra story displayed is all probably untrue reputation, but Ms.Kelley's scheme for hurting him backfired - her character is evident. The preface says,''Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us." True.

On Sinatra: This Is Not The Book To Read.......2006-04-13

I read this bound piece of trash twenty years ago. I thought it was nothing but a steaming, stinking pile of lies and over-the-top exaggerations. Time has shown that the author, Kitty Kelley, is a hateful smear mistress lacking the least bit of integrity and decency.

All you will get from this book besides the outright lies are hearsay and rumors.
According to Kelley, Sinatra was nothing but a spoiled brat and bullying coward who relied on thugs to get what he wanted.
She tells us he brought home prostitutes and tried to force his first wife, Nancy, into threesomes with them. We read about a mafia hit on a smalltown sheriff whose wife was being screwed by Ol' Blue Eyes. Then there is the tale of a hot pot of fresh coffee which Sinatra launched at his longtime valet's face. Do you get the idea of what this book is all about?
HIS WAY is typical Kitty Kelley, epitomizing her level and ability as a writer and a human being.

Sinatra had many faults but they were vastly outnumbered by his virtues.

"The Next Time You Run Into Dorothy Kilgallen, Make Sure You're In Your Car." .......2006-03-25

Kitty Kelley is famous for her tell-all unauthorized biographies of celebrities. This is the one that put her on the map. The target of a "prior restraint" suit by Sinatra that tried to block its publication (fortunately for the First Amendment he failed), the resulting uproar made this book an instant best-seller.

Almost any reader will be titillated by the "Unauthorized" in the title, and HIS WAY does have some merit in the Guilty Pleasures department; but Kelley is so unrelentingly negative about Frank Sinatra that this two-and-a-half star effort becomes too easy to put down.

A reader coming here for a glimpse of Ol' Blue Eyes meets a skinny, histrionic bully who was fascinated by gangsters, lived by threats alone, was alternately the most generous and the most vituperative of men, and who never dropped his torch for Ava Gardner, for whom he had turned his life upside-down.

Kelley, however, chirps past most of his actual career in favor of juicy bedroom gossip, and never acknowledges that the twenty-five year old Sinatra was not the fifty year old Sinatra. Instead, The Chairman of The Board seems to have sprung fully grown and unflatteringly from Hoboken, New Jersey, much as Athena did from the head of Zeus.

Kelley moves from sordid story to sordid story with glee and with barely a breath, clearly not understanding (or wishing to understand) the inner motivations of her incredibly complex subject. HIS WAY is catty, enjoyable tabloid trash. But it's not "biography."

Sinatra had a lifelong feud with the Media (even though he lived and died in its eye). Kelley, a yellow journalist, clearly takes sides with her fellow journalists.

His Way the Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra

Average customer rating:

His Way the Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra
Kitty Kelly
Manufacturer: Bantam Books, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Average customer rating:

His Way the Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra
Kitty Kelley
Manufacturer: Bantam books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Average customer rating:

His Way, The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra
Kitty Kelley
Manufacturer: New York: Bantam Books, 1986
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Average customer rating:

His Way- The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra
Kitty Kelley
Manufacturer: Bantam Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Product Description

This is the book that Frank Sinatra tried to stop with a two-million-dollar lawsuit: the unauthorized biography of one of the most controversial yet elusive public figures of out time--a fully documented, highly detailed, and penetrating portrait of the man behind the voice.

Average customer rating:

His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra
Kitty Kelley
Manufacturer: Bantam Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Average customer rating:

His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra
Kitty Kelley
Manufacturer: Bantam Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Average customer rating:

His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra
Frank] Kelley, Kitty [Sinatra
Manufacturer: Bantam Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

A Su Manera: Biografia No Autorizada De Frank Sinatra/His Way : The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra

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A Su Manera: Biografia No Autorizada De Frank Sinatra/His Way : The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra
Kitty Kelley
Manufacturer: Lectorum Pubns Inc (J)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Spanish | Foreign Language Nonfiction | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Biografías y memorias | Libros en español | Formats | Books

His Way: An Unauthorized Biography Of Frank Sinatra [Paperback] by Kelley...

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His Way: An Unauthorized Biography Of Frank Sinatra [Paperback] by Kelley...
Enid Blyton
Manufacturer: Pan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000WEZ2P2

Book Description

In the furious skies of the Battle of Britain, one aircraft captured the imagination of the British people - it was the Supermarine Spitfire. This diminutive and elegant fighter represented the last hope against invasion by Hitler's unstoppable Blitzkrieg. Reginald Mitchell's innovative design was born of racing seaplanes built to win the Schneider Trophy - the most famous air races of the Twenties and Thirties. The Mk I first flew in 1936 and the type entered RAF service in 1938. Wartime development was rapid. Part of the success story was the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. As this improved, so did the Spit. The Mk V was built in greater numbers than any other model and provided Fighter Command's backbone during 1941-42. This is the perfect introductory book for the general reader, enthusiast and modeler alike wishing to find a succinct yet detailed introduction to the design and history of the Spitfire. Why was the aircraft conceived? What was it like to fly on a mission? Who were the people who designed it and became famous for flying it? What were its virtues and vices? These and many more questions are answered here, plus a host of illustrations that show variations of color schemes used in different operational theatres and rare photographs taken when the heat was on.

Spitfire MKS V1-F24 -Cmbt Leg (Combat Legends)

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Spitfire MKS V1-F24 -Cmbt Leg (Combat Legends)
Peter Caygill
Manufacturer: The Crowood Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Military | History | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 1840374004

Book Description

Having already achieved everlasting fame in the Battle of Britain, the Spitfire was developed more than any other fighter of the Second World War.

Air Combat Legends Volume 1-Supermarine Spitfire and Messerschmitt Bf 109 (Air Combat Legends)

Average customer rating:

A lot of pictures and mistakes.
Two Mortal Enemies

Air Combat Legends Volume 1-Supermarine Spitfire and Messerschmitt Bf 109 (Air Combat Legends)
David Donald
Manufacturer: AIRtime
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Aviation | Military | History | Subjects | Books

Book Description

When the United States entered WWII it was ill prepared to meet the threat posed by Axis air forces equipped with modern fighting aircraft. That all changed as the American war machine rapidly geared up for the conflict and US aerospace companies rushed to develop and ready for service a range of state-of-the-art warplanes. Three fighters stand out as pivotal in helping turn the tide to the Allies' advantage - the legendary twin-boom Lightning, the massive Thunderbolt and enormously successful Mustang. This second volume in the Air Combat Legends series examines the development, service record, combat action, operators, missionsand weapons of these great aircraft. Superbly illustrated throughout, this is a 'must-have' volume for those who want the inside stories on the fighters that helped America win the war.

Customer Reviews:

A lot of pictures and mistakes........2007-01-05

It is a good book. It has a lot of pictures and also too many wrong information. It's a shame. David Donald haven't made a final revision.

Two Mortal Enemies.......2004-11-22

The Spit and the Messerschmitt have gone down in history because of their roles in the Battle of Britain. There will long be arguments over which was the better plane. Very similar in size, design and performance, both planes were the state of the art of aircraft design when they met in late 1940. Both planes had a single low wing, a V-12 liquid cooled engine, and look very much alike. Which was the better plane, that's a subject calling for beer around a fireplace.

This book will halp you in your discussions, on either side. 148 pages talk about the Spit. I can't say that evey possible variation was covered, but there are a lot of variations here that I never heard of including specialized recon, the Griffin engined models, and several versions of the SeaFire. Also well documented is the American use of the Spitfire. Some 272 machines were flown by the Americans.

97 pages document the Messerschmitt. As with the Spit it begins with the early development and continues through the various versions to conclude with the after war production in Czechoslovakia and Spain.

This book is certain to become a standard reference book on the two planes.

Average customer rating:

Spitfire in Combat
Alfred Price
Manufacturer: Sutton Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Aviation | Military | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

Book Description

The Supermarine Spitfire is probably the most famous fighter aircraft of all time, with a distinctive shape and sound that mark it out from most other aircraft of the World War II period. Alfred Price employs first-hand accounts to evoke a series of snapshots of the Spitfire, showing what it was really like to fly this legendary aircraft in combat. From the biplane era of the 1930s to the Jet Age of the 1950s the Spitfire, through continuous adaptation and development, proved itself the equal of any of its competitors, whether friend or foe. The author explores important aspects of the Spitfire's evolution, from the specially modified "speed" Spitfire of 1938 to the history of the top scoring Spitfire, EN398, and the postwar Spitfire PR19 recce missions over China.

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SPITFIRE: THE COMBAT HISTORY

Manufacturer: Airlife
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Average customer rating:

A most competent work.

Spitfire: The Combat History
Robert Jackson
Manufacturer: Motorbooks International
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

Aviation | Military | History | Subjects | Books

General | Military | History | Subjects | Books

General | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 076030193X

Customer Reviews:

A most competent work........2006-03-25

What a pity this work should cross my desk just as soon as I had finished another, much more comprehensive book on the same subject. Nevertheless, I remain objective in this review.

The British Supermarine Spitfire was designed for the sole purpose of winning the prestigious Schneider Trophy between the two world wars which dominated the first half of the 20th Century. There is no doubt that new, and quite revolutionary forward swept wing was the stuff of pure genius and the trophy was won outright. As another war with Germany loomed, however, the Royal Air Force desperately needed a new fighter. It was from that earlier successful design that a more powerful aircraft was born and into which was fitted the new Merlin Engine. This was an aircraft that could spit fire and the Spitfire was born.

Despite my having just read a much fuller account of the history of this aircraft, this is a most competent work and one which is well worth obtaining for those with an interest in the Spitfire. Some of the detail contained in this book was new to me and, therefore, adds much to one's overall interest.

This author knows his stuff and regularly obtains top grades for his books.

NM

The Story of the Spitfire: An Operational and Combat History

Average customer rating:

The focus on its importance in military circles makes for a fine reference.

The Story of the Spitfire: An Operational and Combat History
Ken Delve
Manufacturer: Greenhill Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Aviation | Military | History | Subjects | Books

General | Military | History | Subjects | Books

Military Science | History | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 1853677256

Book Description

To many people, the Spitfire was the embodiment of air fighting during World War II. The Spitfire Story presents a thrilling appraisal of this remarkable aircraft's fighting capability and the tactics of the pilots who flew it. Using official evaluations and reports, alongside technical and tactical developments, plus the recollections of Spitfire pilots, the book provides an unparalleled insight into the combat career of this legendary plane. Despite some problems with their new aircraft, the Fighter Command pilots of 1940 were generally delighted with the Spitfire – speed, maneuverability and fire-power were all far greater than they had been with the biplanes of only a year or so earlier. Tactics, training and experience were another matter, and the RAF was out of date. The air battles over Britain in late 1940 forged the Spitfire legend – but how justified was it? There were only nineteen Spitfire squadrons in Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain, but as the RAF turned to the offensive the numbers of Spitfire units dramatically increased. The combat initiative was lost to improved Bf109s and Fw190s, but developments in the Spitfire clawed back the advantage, with increased performance and, crucially, better training. By 1944 the Spitfire was operating as a fighter-bomber in various theatres of war, with new tactics and new problems. To many fighter-pilots having bombs strapped under the aircraft verged on an insult – but with aerial targets in short supply this was the most effective, but risky, way of taking the war to the enemy. The Spitfire Story details the introduction, development and successes of this incredible aircraft, and charts the training and skills of its pilots. It is a compelling account which will be welcomed by both enthusiast and general reader alike. Ken Delve is the author of more than twenty aviation books, including Bomber Command, D-Day: The Air Battle and Night Fighter.

Customer Reviews:

The focus on its importance in military circles makes for a fine reference........2007-08-07

Ken Delve's THE STORY OF THE SPITFIRE: AN OPERATIONAL AND COMBAT HISTORY uses official source material and first-hand accounts to survey the Spitfire's history and development, examining its fighting capability and tactics of the pilots who flew it. Official evaluations, reports, and technical specs join with the memories of Spitfire pilots to provide insights into this aircraft's career, problems, and performance. The focus on its importance in military circles makes for a fine reference.

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