James Kaplan’s “Frank: The Voice” is authentically a page-turner, a strident tabloid epic constructed out of facts — or more precisely out of the disparate and sometimes contradictory testimony of scores of participants in Frank Sinatra’s early life. There is certainly enough testimony to choose from; pieces of Sinatra, variously skewed and distorted, are scattered all over the latter part of the twentieth century. But they hardly converge into a unified portrait: confronted with the multitude of Sinatras that one must attempt to resolve into a single plausible person, there is a gathering sense of unsettling dissonance quite at odds with the perfected harmonies of his greatest recordings.
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Sinatra Driven by Demons?
At his core, Frank Sinatra was consumed by pain and anxiety. A new book chronicles his irresistible ascent then the loss of altitude which delighted those repelled by his arrogance.
Monthly Issue
April 2026
In this monthly issue, we examine how our understanding of energy — and how we source and use it — is evolving.
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