The No1 Ethical retailer for Books, CD’s, DVD’s & Games
30 Day Refund Guarantee

Bing Crosby: Swinging on a Star: The War Years, 1940-1946

Bing Crosby: Swinging on a Star: The War Years, 1940-1946

by Gary Giddins (Author)

  • Used

    Illustrated 2018

    $12.40
Synopsis

Bing Crosby dominated American popular culture in a way that few artists ever have. From the dizzy 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, NBCC Winner and preeminent cultural 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.

$12.40

Save:$33.52 (73%)

Quantity

2 in stock

More Information

Format: Illustrated
 Pages: 736
 Edition: Illustrated
 Publisher: Little, Brown US
Published: 13 Dec 2018
ISBN 10: 0316887927
ISBN 13: 9780316887922

Media Reviews
Praise for Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams

Gary Giddins may be the best thing to happen to Bing Crosby since Bob Hope.... Crosby couldn't have hoped for a finer biographer: elegant writer, informed historian, thorough scholar, and one of America's most eminent jazz critics. --John McDonough, Wall Street Journal


This is, quite simply, the best-researched, best-written, most entertaining music biography I've read. --Merrill Noden, Mojo
Phenomenal smarts and critical acumen.... A formidable biographer and exegetical wonder, Gary Giddins is so persuasive that even the most skeptical post-Boomer should close the book with the eerie sensation that it's Bing's world after all--we just live in it. --James Marcus, Atlantic Monthly
Giddins packs exhaustive research and detail into his sprawling narrative while keeping the prose relaxed and vivid, and sprinkles in shrewd critical assessments of Crosby's music and films. Crosby emerges as an aloof, cool cat, and Giddins's engrossing show-biz bio richly recreates the popular culture he helped define. --Publishers Weekly, starred review
Author Bio
Gary Giddins wrote the Weather Bird jazz column in the Village Voice for over 30 years and later directed the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the CUNY Graduate Center. He received the National Nook Critics Circle Award, the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award, and the Bell Atlantic Award for Visions of Jazz: The First Century in 1998. His other books include Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams-The Early Years, 1930-1940, 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; Warning Shadow; and biographies of Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. He has won six ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Peabody Award in Broadcasting. He lives in New York, NY.