Bing Crosby A Pocketful of Dreams - The Early Years 1903 - 1940

From 1934 to 1954, Bing Crosby utterly dominated North American entertainment. Nobody has ever had as many hit records, and Crosby was the number one movie star five years in a row. The rise of Bing Crosby was the rise of North American popular culture itself. In Bing Crosby, the first volume of the definitive Crosby biography, award-winning music critic Gary Giddins chronicles the ascension of Bings career. From Crosbys early recordings, to his triumph on Americas most popular radio show, to his first success in Hollywood, Giddins provides the most detailed study yet of the rise of a North American star. This is the first definitive biography of Crosby and was written with exclusive access to unpublished materials. Giddins Visions of Jazz won the 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award. Bing Crosby was the first North American pop culture icon, and his career heavily influenced Sinatra and Elvis, as well as popular music itself.

Gary Giddins received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Visions of Jazz in 1998. In 2001 he received the prestigious Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award for Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams. His other books include biographies of Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. Giddins, who was featured in the Ken Burns PBS documentary Jazz, is a longtime columnist for the Village Voice and lives in New York City.