Best Selling Books by Nick Tosches

A portrait of singer Jerry Lee Lewis details his early life, music, controversial marriage, problems and decline, endurance, and revival in popularity.

NOW A NETFLIX FILM STARRING OSCAR ISAAC, GAL GADOT, GERARD BUTLER, JOHN MALKOVICH, MARTIN SCORSESE, AND MORE. A dark, hallucinatory literary thriller that intertwines a modern underworld quest for a lost manuscript of The Divine Comedy with the violent, obsessive inner life of Dante Alighieri himself. Deep inside the Vatican library, a priest discovers the rarest and most valuable art object ever found: the manuscript of The Divine Comedy, written in Dante''s own hand. Via Sicily, the manuscript makes its way from the priest to a mob boss in New York City, where a writer named Nick Tosches is called to authenticate the prize. For this writer, the temptation is too great: he steals the manuscript in a last-chance bid to have it all. Some will find it offensive; others will declare it transcendent; it is certain to be the most ragingly debated novel of the decade.

\"As this story unfolds, so too does a parallel tale: the odyssey, seven hundred years ago, of Dante himself, a man trying to weave out of the grossness of his own humanity a poem that contains the sum of the world''s wisdom and the very breath of the divine. It is a struggle every bit as deadly as, centuries later, that between the individuals fighting to possess his manuscript.\"--BOOK JACKET.

The anti-Ali, Sonny Liston represents everything that is compelling and terrifying about boxing. An overwhelmingly powerful fighter, Liston rose from a desperately poor childhood to street criminal to world heavyweight champion. He then became the pawn of a series of criminal organizations and was shadowed throughout his life by government investigations, arrests, and the rumor of corruption. The Devil and Sonny Liston is not just the biography of a boxer; it is one of the greatest organized-crime stories ever told and confirms Toschess place as one of the most powerful and original writers of our time. Toschess acclaimed biography of Dean Martin, Dino, sold more than 110,000 copies From the rappers Wu-Tang Clan to writer Thom Jones, people are fascinated by Sonny Liston and by boxing in general. King of the World by David Remnick sold more than 100,000 copies. Tom Cruises Cruise/Wagner Productions is at work on a movie based on this book. A collection of Toschess best writing, The Nick Tosches Reader, is due out in 2000. Tosches is a contributing editor of Vanity Fair.

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.

Flamboyant mobster Arnold Rothstein was gambling and money. He was the inspiration for Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby and Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls. It was rumored he masterminded the 1919 World Series fix. He was Mr. Broadway, a king of corruption holding court from his private booth at Lindy''s Restaurant. In this lively, sprawling biography, the inimitable Nick Tosches -- \"one of the greatest living American writers\" (Dallas Observer) -- examines the myth and extraordinary legacy of Arnold Rothstein. It is an elegy to old New York that places an iconic, larger-than-life criminal kingpin firmly at the center of nothing less than the history of the entire Western world.

A work of dangerous and haunting beauty by America''s last real literary outlaw. Under Tiberius is a thrilling story of crime and deceit involving the man who came to be called Jesus Christ. Deep in the recesses of the Vatican, Nick Tosches unearths a first-century memoir by Gaius Fulvius Falconius, foremost speechwriter for Emperor Tiberius. The codex is profound, proof of the existence of a Messiah who was anything but the one we''ve known -- a shabby and licentious thief. After encountering him in the streets of Judea, Gaius becomes spin doctor to Jesus, and the pair schemes to accrue untold riches by convincing the masses that Jesus is the Son of God. As their marriage of truth and lies is consummated, friendship and wary respect develop between these two grifters. Outrageous and disturbing, Under Tiberius is as black as the ravishing night, shot through with fierce and brilliant light.

Offering an irreverent inside look at American entertainment, from the heyday of Hollywood and Las Vegas and the rise of television, this is a biography of Dean Martin. Born in Ohio, Dino Crocetti came up the hard way, pumping petrol, boxing, working in a steel mill and dealing craps in a local mob joint, before turning to singing. After two changes of name and a nose job, he rose to great heights of fame, wealth and power, and as his notoriety and fortune grew he withdrew more and more into the silence of seclusion. Eventually he ceased to perform.

''Dazzling... An unforgettable journey to some of boxing''s darkest places'' Steve Bunce, author of Bunce''s Big Fat Short History of British Boxing Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2000 A 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.

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; medieval myth and musical miscegenation; sex, drugs, murder; and rays of fierce illumination on Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others, famous and forgotten, whose demonology is America''s own. Profusely and superbly illustrated, Country stands as one of the most brilliant explorations of American musical culture ever written.

In 1962, Sonny Liston became boxing''s world heavyweight champion. He was a poor plantation boy and a bruiser for the mob who had done time for armed robbery, but he had fought his way to the top. Those he met in the ring said he was unstoppable, even dangerous. Sonny, however, knew differently.

This is the sprawling biography of Arnold Rothstein, a mythical New Yorker who was the inspiration for Meyer Wolfsheim in \"The Great Gatsby\" and Nathan Detroit in \"Guys and Dolls.\" Rothstein was also rumored to be the mastermind of the Black Sox scandal, the fixing of the 1919 World Series.

The author, fueled by romantic, spiritual, and medicinal needs, details his mesmerizing quest--part spiritual, part hallucinogenic--from Europe to Cambodia, in search of the mysterious opium den, ultimately discovering the key to true fulfillment. 20,000 first printing.

Michele Sindona''s Explosive Story.