In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr.

Description: "Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 2003."--Title page verso.

Review Quotes: Winner of the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award in Nonfiction, the ASCAP Deems Taylor-Timothy White Award for Outstanding Musical Biography, and the Nonfiction Book of the Year Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association

"Portray[s] Davis' Herculean achievements and epic decline in intimate detail while also putting them in historical and social context." --Los Angeles Times

"[Haygood] does a vivid, immediate job of conjuring the many worlds [Davis, Jr.] traversed, and shows how the issue of race, in his own mind and in the minds of his fans and detractors, shaped his career and life." --The New York Times

"A chilling portrait of a complex man who came to personify Las Vegas' flash as well as its lost soul." --Entertainment Weekly

"Haygood's rich and layered biography illuminates the world into which Sammy Davis, Jr. was born--Cuban American, Harlem and vaudeville--and the elite, mostly white world in which Davis yearned to live." --Minneapolis Star Tribune

"One of the real strengths of In Black and White is Haygood's skill as a social and cultural historian, his eye for the significant detail, as he chronicles Davis's sometimes halting, sometimes pathetic attempts to refashion himself in response to new social, cultural, and political conditions." --The Boston Globe

"Wil Haygood's unflinching biography of Sammy Davis, Jr. is a portrait of the artist as a lost soul." --Time

"Haygood is . . . a vivid and provocative writer, with a knack for setting the scene and making atmosphere double as analysis." --The Washington Post

"[A] nuanced portrayal of Davis' conflicted sense of self." --People

"Haygood writes with great power and great compassion, and he has created a book that I couldn't put down and that I will never forget." --Robert A. Caro

"Of all the books I have read on fame and its discontents, this is the most revelatory, the most insightful, not least because it affords us a sustained glimpse of a famous life lived amid the often conflicting crosscurrents of race, fame, sex and crime." --Sean O'Hagan, The Observer

"[A] moving, exhaustive life of one of America's greatest entertainers. . . . Haygood's reporting and powerful prose reveal Davis's career against the backdrop of the swinging '60s and the Rat Pack . . . and Davis as a tragically complex man." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A fascinating read. . . . In Black and White does splendid justice to its subject while brilliantly touching on the larger theme of race in 20th century America." --Variety

"A dazzling, hard-to-put-down examination of [Davis, Jr.'s] life and times. . . . Exhaustively researched and written with the assured and snappy style of one of Sammy's own shows." --BookPage