Books by Nick Tosches

From dealing blackjack in the small-time gangster  town of Steubenville, Ohio, to carousing with the  famous "Rat Pack" in a Hollywood he  called home, Dean Martin lived in a grandstand,  guttering life of booze, broads, and big money. He  rubbed shoulders with the mob, the Kennedys, and  Hollywood''s biggest stars. He was one of America''s  favorite entertainers. But no one really knew him.  Now Nick Tosches reveals the man behind the  image--the dark side of the American dream. It''s a  wild, illuminating, sometimes shocking tale of sex,  ambition, heartaches--and a life lived hard, fast,  and without  apologies.

From New York Times bestselling author Nick Tosches comes a novel about a man, haunted by demons, who finds salvation in an unlikely source.

'Dazzling... An unforgettable journey to some of boxing's darkest places' Steve Bunce, author of Bunce's Big Fat Short History of British BoxingShortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2000A breathtakingly brutal and evocative account of the life of infamous boxing world champion Sonny Liston Sonny Liston is one of the most controversial men the boxing world has ever seen. He rose from a childhood of grinding poverty to become 1962's heavyweight world champion. He spent time in prison, he was known to have mob connections, he was hated and vilified by his public. And after he lost the world title to Cassius Clay in a spectacular fall from grace, he died under mysterious and never fully explained circumstances.Sonny Liston's life story is an unsolved mystery and an underappreciated tragedy. In uncompromising detail, Nick Tosches captures the shadowy figure of Liston, this most mesmerising and enigmatic of boxing antiheroes.

Part mystery, part biography, part meditation on a forgotten singer from the early days of jazz, this is Nick Tosches piecing together of a life - that of Emmett Miller, whose songs prefigured jazz, country, blues and much of the popular music of the 20th century.

'Once upon a time, when New York City lived and breathed, there was a man marked for death, like us all ...'Arnold Rothstein was one of the most mysterious figures in Manhattan's history: a godfather of organized crime - rumoured to have fixed baseball's World Series - yet a peer of the Morgans and Rockefellers. But one night in 1928 he was shot in the stomach and died shortly afterwards, refusing to speak a word concerning his own murder. Nick Tosches jumps feet first into Rothstein's life to lay bare his legacy - to New York and to the whole Western world - and to try and make some sense of what the 'king of the Jews' means to us. What we get back is an angry howl right out of the tortured heart of America itself.

A forgotten singer from the early days of jazz is at the center of this riveting book -- a narrative that is part mystery, part biography, part meditation on the meaning and power of music.

The dramatic and tormented life of Jerry Lee Lewis is the most fabled in rock 'n' roll history. Hellfire is a wild, riveting, and beautifully written biography that received universal acclaim on its original publication and is now an American classic. Born in Louisiana to a family legacy of great courage and greater madness, Jerry Lee was torn throughout his life between a harsh Pentecostal God and the Devil of alcohol, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. At twenty-one he recorded 'Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On', which propelled him to stardom. Almost immediately, news of his marriage to his thirteen-year-old cousin all but destroyed his career. Over the next twenty years, Jerry Lee, ever indomitable and ever wild, would rise again as a country star, and then lose it all again to his own inner demons. Hellfire is a brilliant, audacious journey into the soul of a rock 'n' roll legend, and into the soul of rock 'n' roll itself.

"Celebrating the dark origins of our most American music, Country reveals a wild shadowland of history that encompasses blackface minstrels and yodeling cowboys; honky-tonk hell and rockabilly heaven;"

"Long before Elvis Presley entered Sam Phillips's Sun Records studio in 1954, rock 'n' roll was being performed and recorded by the likes of Big Joe Turner, Louis Jordan, Wynonie Harris, the Clovers, t"

A Da Capo Original: Thirty years of writings by a unique voice in American literature.