Customer Reviews

Bing Crosby: A Bio-Bibliography (Bio-Bibliographies in the Performing Arts)

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This excellent overview of the life and career of Bing Crosby is one of precious few serious works to have been published on the subject since the late 1940s. Of course, we now have volume I of what will ultimately be the definitive bio, the landmark "A Pocketful of Dreams" by Gary Giddins, which covers Crosby's life up to 1940 - but until the proposed second volume is completed, Osterholm's "Bio-Bibliography" remains, along with Malcolm Macfarlane's "Bing Crosby - Day by Day", one of the most comprehensive pure reference works available on the most popular entertainer of the first half of the 20th century. For the Crosby researcher, this book is simply indispensable.

This is one hundred pages of pure fluff, poorly arranged, dismally presented and written apparently in the span of six days. Bing Crosby was a towering figure in American entertainment for thirty years, his influence upon Sinatra, Dean Martin, Perry Como, Pat Boone and scores of other singers is glaringly obvious. He was also an Academy Award-winning actor who starred in some of Hollywoods most stellar movies. This book simply doesn't do justice to Bing, his life, talent or the monumental impact he had upon popular culture.

The Bing biography to own and cherish is Gary Giddon's recent Bing book, available on Amazon. That books swings, this book is a dismal and shoddy job, worthy of an elementary school report, not a published book.