The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin'

In The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin', author Bill Zehme presents a masterful assembly of the most personal details and gorgeous minutiae of Frank Sinatra's way of livingmatters of the heart and heartbreak, friendship and leadership, drinking and cavorting, brawling and wooing, tuxedos and snap-brimsall crafted from rare interviews with Sinatra himself as well as many other intimates, including Tony Bennett, Don Rickles, Angie Dickinson, Tony Curtis, and Robert Wagner, in addition to daughters Nancy and Tina Sinatra.


Capturing the timeless romance and classic style of the fifties and the loose sixties, The Way You Wear Your Hat is a stunning exploration of the Sinatra mystique.

Frank Sinatra is that rare American icon whose lifestyle has walked hand-in-hand with his art, the one impossible without the other. Like Elvis, he has seemed intent on living out the dreams his songs inspire, capturing the American public's imagination along the way.

Sinatra's irresistibly romantic sensibility is the subject of this effusive book by Zehme, coauthor of memoirs by Jay Leno and Regis Philbin. Sinatra, who is famous for his hatred of the press, allowed Zehme to ask him a number of questions about his philosophy of life, such as ""How stiff should a stiff drink be?"" and ""What is the most important thing to look for in a woman?"" Zehme sprinkles the questions and Sinatra's frank answers throughout chapters with titles like ""Broads,"" ""Pallies"" and ""Ring-a-Ding-Ding."" The result is a charming, entertaining look at Sinatra's life (which only incidentally involves music here) in the guise of a straight man's guide to living well.

The book begins in a rush, with a Sinatra epigram (""Let's start the action!""); the final chapters deal with family, heartbreak and aging. Zehme does here what other, music-centered biographies of Sinatra do not do: he suggests the pattern behind something as seemingly unpredictable as the events of a man's life. Zehme seems to say that, no matter what has befallen him, Sinatra has acted and reacted his way.

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Elvis and The Memphis Mafia

A monumental oral biography filled with raucous joy, aching loss and terrible poignancy, Elvis and the Memphis Mafia, is the first book to capture the King – the man and the phenomenon – in his full complexity. Through revealing interviews with three of Elvis’s closest friends, who were also his protectors and rescuers, Alanna Nash achieves the first true mapping of Elvis’s psyche.

Billy Smith – Elvis’s first cousin and the person he reputedly loved most after his own mother – Marty Lacker – best man at his wedding and foreman of the ‘Memphis Mafia’, the King’s handpicked group of gatekeepers and confidants – and Lamar Fike – the touring crew member who accompanied him into the Army – were with Elvis from his teens to his final days and provide unique access to the greatest of all rock and roll legends. The revelations cut through every aspect of Elvis’s life, from the childhood seeds of his drug dependency, through his fear for his mother’s life and his plan to change his identity, to his bizarre self-mutilation. No one who reads this symphonic blending of three proud, ribald, sad and ultimately wistful voices can fail to be profoundly moved.

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