About this item
A revelatory look at the tumultuous life of a jazz legend and American cultural icon. In the first biography of Billie Holiday in more than two decades, Paul Alexander - author of heralded lives of Sylvia Plath and J. D. Salinger - gives us an unconventional portrait of arguably America's most eminent jazz singer. He shrewdly focuses on the last year of her life - with relevant flashbacks to provide context - to evoke and examine the persistent magnificence of Holiday's artistry when it was supposed to have declined, in the wake of her drug abuse, relationships with violent men, and run-ins with the law.. During her lifetime and after her death, Billie Holiday was often depicted as a down-on-her-luck junkie severely lacking in self-esteem. Relying on interviews with people who knew her, and new material unearthed in private collections and institutional archives, Bitter Crop - a reference to the last two words of Strange Fruit, her moving song about lynching - limns Holiday as a powerful, ambitious woman who overcame her flaws to triumph as a vital figure of American popular music.
About the Author
Paul Alexander is the author of Southern Gothic, his first novel.Besides the bestselling Kindle Singles Murdered, Accused, and Homicidal, he has published eight previous books of nonfiction: Ariel Ascending: Writings About Sylvia Plath; Rough Magic, a biography of Plath; Boulevard of Broken Dreams: The Life, Times, and Legend of James Dean, the bestseller that has been published in 10 countries; Death and Disaster: The Rise of the Warhol Empire and the Race For Andy's Millions; Man of the People: The Life of John McCain; The Candidate, a chronicle of John Kerry's presidential campaign; and Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove.A former reporter for Time, Alexander has published journalism in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, New York, The Nation, The Village Voice, Salon, Worth, The New York Observer, George, Cosmopolitan, More, Interview, ARTnews, Mirabella, Premiere, Out, The Advocate, Travel & Leisure, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Biography, Men's Journal, Best Life, The New York Review of Books, The Daily Beast, and Rolling Stone.Shane Salerno's forthcoming feature documentary Salinger is based on Alexander's biography of J.D. Salinger. Alexander is the author of the plays Strangers in the Land of Canaan and Edge, which he directed. Developed at The Actors Studio, Edge, the critically acclaimed one-woman play about Sylvia Plath, ran in New York, London, Los Angeles, among other cities. Edge toured Australia and New Zealand and enjoyed a second run in New York. In all, Torn performed Edge 400 times. Alexander is also the director of Brothers in Arms, a documentary film about John Kerry and Vietnam (First Run Features).A graduate of The University of Alabama and The Writers' Workshop at The University of Iowa, Alexander is a member of the Authors Guild and PEN American Center. In the fall of 2002, he was a Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He lives in New York City.
