Well...Tosches has always been upfront about the importance of money and this particular book is a prime example of a man writing solely for money.

Nick Tosches in collaboration with Daryl Hall & John Oates keeps the beat going all the way through this well-written semi-autobiography of Daryl Hall & John Oates from their beginnings to 1984.

The book itself is a good, easy read, featuring lots of color photos and drawings by Daryl that hasn't had too many cartoonists looking over their shoulders.

This item is currently out-of-print, but it would do well for the author to update "Dangerous Dances" since a lot has happened since 1984 and Daryl & John have had a rennaisance of sorts with the success of their "Do It For Love" album which has already scored a number one A/C song and the duo has also had a recent (February, 2003) Billboard Magazine issue done as a tribute to their 30+ years as artists.

This is THE official autobiography of Daryl Hall & John Oates. They take you through their childhoods right up to the most successful time of their careers. There are some great pictures in this book from childhood right on up. If you want to know as much as possible about the most successful pop duo in music history, this is the book you'll want to read!

.... But not. When he's writing about Emmett Miller and the history of minstrelsy, he's brilliant. Not only did he do a ton of original research on Miller and minstrelsy and early American music (blues, jazz and country, before any of those three were genres; even the categories are foreign to us today), but he can tie it into modern musical ideas like no one else. He makes these shadows come alive for a minute, which is amazing; you can almost smell Miller in the room. And his exploration of these roots pulls together many previously ungathered threads.

However, he goes off the deep end, as usual for Tosches. Too many Ezra Pound discursions, for starters. If you're trying to impress us with your deep knowledge of foreign languages, you'd best not quote extensively from that old fraud, who "translated" buttloads of poetry from languages he couldn't read (with "help"); this taints Tosches with the suspicion of similar overreaching. It's great that he has read up on Greek word roots, but these links are too tenuous; it's a little bit of showing off and doesn't really illuminate anything. If he wants to write another book carrying his musical history ideas back from English ballads to ancient Greece, go for it, but here it just looks like dressing-up time. Stick to the blues.

And though Tosches is a great critic of the pop music of his time, like all of his contemporaries in that game (Meltzer, Marcus, ad infinitum) he's every bit as stuck in a particular rut as those he would criticize. He's quoting Iggy Pop and Patti Smith again, folks.

But while those complaints are serious, they don't detract from the fundamental brilliance of the story. It's a terrific, if languid, detective story, as well as an opening into a new world of understanding popular music. Tosches is the only "rock" critic ever who could have written it, which is a pity. I don't see how you can understand where our music came from without this book. Read it.

Nick Tosches brought Emmett Miller onto the stage of writing about American popular music about 20 years ago in his magic-realistist imagined chapters on Emmett Miller in his original edition of Country Music about 20 years ago. At the time, his comments were imaginary because we knew so little about Miller. As Tosches wrote, for all we knew then he could be running a candy store in Jersy City.

Over those twenty years Tosches found out about Miller and records a lot of that information in this book. This is great selfless work by Tosches and by other scholars who were inspired by his work and by Miller's music.

Well, this is not fiction, this is what we know about him, about minstrelry, about his life. You can't blame Nick for the fact that the truth is a bit less colorful and still less filled in than fiction.

Also, Tosches is no academic and does not pretend to be. He's music's best and most literary representative of the new journalism.

Miller is important. He was good. His music sounds great today. If you don't think so, you need your ears adjusted, your sense of life, love, and joy revived. He may not have been a financial success, but critical trend setters, particularly in Country Music, have styled themselves after him to this day.

Bob Wills--another former blackface perform-- combined Emmett Miller, the blues of the MIssissippi Sheiks, La Musica Ranchera, and ranch dance music into Western Swing. Wills auditioned his singers throughout his career by asking them to sing Miller's hits and comparing them to Miller. Wills recorded songs identified with Miller throughout his career.

Hank William's biggest success was essentially an imitation of an imitation of Miller. Merle Haggard has acknowledged his heritage by recording a Miller tribute album and usually does a Miller-Wills number during every concert. Leon Redbone gets a very large amount of his singing style and personna from Miller.

The problem of minstrelry can't be discussed without discussing race and culture in America in a way most people can't discuss it, like it is a real problem that is really there and part of the discoursde, win or lose. I don't exactly agree with Tosches' take on the problem, but, at least, he approaches the issue honestly and put it in the center of the discourse where it
belongs.

Perhaps, unlike Tosches' Country Music and Hellfire, this is not a book that belongs in every home, every school, every library, every bookstore, but it belongs on every bookshelf of anyone interest in American popular music, especially country music and Western Swing.

"The mystery of Emmett Miller, I think, will never be penetrated." So wrote Nick Tosches nearly 25 years ago, in the first edition of his seminal book 'Country.' At that time, it seemed certain that Miller would go down as just another biographical cipher in popular music history.

Never say never. Miller's legend refused to be left alone, and the long-deceased minstrel man from a vanished era so haunted Tosches in the ensuing years that he, with the help of other researchers, finally began fleshing out the actual details of Emmett Miller's life and times. This book, a worthy companion and in many ways a sequel to 'Country,' is the result.

In 'Where Dead Voices Gather,' Tosches uses Emmett Miller's life as the foundation and starting point to an all-encompassing essay on the subject of race, music, and America. Along this 299-page journey we encounter minstrel men and shamen, Delta bluesmen and drag queens, gospel quartets and Mafioso, New York City society and "Georgia Crackers." If Papa Charlie Jackson shares a paragraph with Ezra Pound, if Ragtime Henry Thomas and Homer are discussed in similar terms, and if Bob Dylan, the Dorsey Brothers, William Faulkner, Scatman Crothers, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stephen Foster, Bob Wills, and Samuel Beckett all make guest appearances throughout, in Tosches's hands it all begins to make sense. Everything relates, nothing has essentially changed much -- "Primordium and continuum." Again and again, Tosches returns to this theme, illuminating his point with arguments and logic that would sound improbable or insane in a lesser writer's hands. The minstrel show never went away, he writes, it just took on new forms, new styles, some more covert than others.

"It went on," he writes, "the strange and gaudy medicine show of American culture: the secrets of its history, its revelations, lost beneath its sound and fury, like the secrets and revelations of an ancient mystery cult, lost to the dust of time, that endure, untelling, where dead voices gather, beneath the endless veils of passing."

Yes, there are some questionable aspects to the book. Relevant photographs and illustrations are inexplicably and inexcusably absent from 'Where Dead Voices Gather.' Occasionally, Tosches launches into personal biography for seemingly no reason at all; it certainly adds nothing to the book, and the ending in particular suffers from this tendency. Similarly, Tosches establishes his patented and tired "machismo" early on by assaulting virtually all academic studies of minstrelsy and, as if to prove that he's no academic sissy, provides no footnotes, bibliography, or anything else befitting a serious piece of historical research.

But the strength of Tosches's prose is such that we must forgive him of his insufferable ego. These flaws are indeed minor in the vast fullness of 'Where Dead Voices Gather.'

This had to be one of the most boring books that I have ever read. At 450 pages it seemed like 1,500. The characters are unsympathetic and who lives, who dies, by the time the book is over you don't care anymore. The author uses Italian phrases throughout the book and after the first 10 or 20 it gets especially annoying. I thought that after reading "Dino" I would give Tosches another try. No more.

What we have here is basically well-dressed pulp fiction (which, incidentally, I mean as a compliment). Not everyone, especially these days, may enjoy Tosches' iconoclastic embrace of the grotesque, but those who like their humor dark & their narratives darker certainly will. Stylistically, the prose runs to the pretentious at times ("a tumescense that was more than urethral"? Please.), but is generally lyrical & pleasing. Definitely an above-average piece of genre fiction.

This is one of the best crime thrillers I've read, and I think that's because it reads like nonfiction -- there's strong emotion and character development, but it's told through the action, the culture, and the settings, not so much by getting into the individual characters' heads. I couldn't put this book down. Tosches' Lower Manhattan locales -- Chinatown, Little Italy -- are right on: gritty, rich with character and history, uniquely beautiful and scary at once. The characters are not-so-loosely based on real figures in NYC organized crime. For fans of journalistic accounts of crime and city life this is a must read.

"The Devil and Sonny Lisaton," does not deal with Liston very much. The book covers mob trivia and rehashed info on mobster influence in boxing during the fifties, but contains very little interesting info on Liston, on his fight career, his opponents or anything else about the man. This is one of the worst boxing books ever published!

I saw the cover, I saw the title, and I thought to myself--I have to get this book. Finally, a detailed account of Liston's life!

I was expecting a lot from this book--maybe too much. After reading it, my expectations were not met. A much better account of Liston can be found in William Nack's brilliant 1991 article "O Unlucky Man," in Sports Illustrated (perhaps the best sports piece ever written); so is David Remnick's "King of The World." Those two books, though smaller works than Tosches' Liston book, have more detail and probe into further depths of Liston's psyche. Tosches obviously knows about and likes to write about the underworld and Liston's connection with them--unfortunately, that wasn't all Liston was about--Tosches misses on Sonny's human side, seeing him as just a piece of meat passed around from mob boss to mob boss.

Tosches virtually ignores the two fights with Ali--speculating on a fix but offering no hard evidence--and barely touching on his title winning effort and rematch with Floyd Patterson, the stuff of high drama, given the time these fights took place in. He also uses the annoying postmodern glitch of interrupting the flow of the book at times to put his own cute comments in the book (hint to Mr. Tosches--just because you're writing about boxing doesn't mean you have to say the f-word every time you interject the story).

I appreciate the detail Tosches went to in writing the book--he obviously did his homework with interviews and documents---if he had just focused more on Sonny the person instead of Sonny the piece of meat, he would have captured Liston's essence much better.

i didnt love this book but didnt hate it either. i wish the book would have dived into the intricacies of the fights much more.

This book is a promise unfulfilled, and not worth the sacrifice it takes a reader to get through it. The modern day plot line, intentionally written to offend with coarse language and imagery, promises an examination of how the corrupt publishing world, dominated by mediocrity, will react to the discovery of the original manuscript of the Divine Comedy in a Vatican store room. But all we get instead are the expressions of awe by literary experts and shoot-outs among the crooks trying to sell the manuscript. The historical plot line, following Dante as he struggles with God and Nature to complete the work, also fails to deliver. It is written in an egotistically overblown style in which every word is latinized (never "begin", always "commence") and adjectives and nouns are routinely converted into pretentious verbs (e.g., "he cruelled his wife"), a trick Dante mastered and Tosches hasn't. The plot falls flat with a dull "twist" at the end about the true authorship of the work that has little to do with the rest of the story and a trite meeting between Dante and an Arabic sage who is supposed to know the meaning of life but who basically tells him nothing. Tosches grasps at an all encompassing world view that accounts for the interplay of the three great religions from the beginning of time to 9/11 (which actually plays a minor and unnecessary role in the plot) but the accomplishment eludes him. The main lesson you come away with is how impressed Tosches is with himself, what he's written (all his prior works get an airing this time around) and what he's learned about classics. Gratuitous profanity does not save this book from bombastic pedantry. Peccato.

This novel really isn't the caper book that most people thought it was going to be. Instead, I think the author tried to meld both his intimate knowledge of Dante and the thuggishness of New York City. What results is a rather schizophrenic work. The book starts out with the plotline in which a priest finds Dante's manuscript of the Divine Comedy. Afterward we are shifted with the plotline(s) of Dante dealing with his banishment from his home in Italy, and his subsequent loss of faith in God; there is also a minor plotline at the end where his wife becommes the primary narrator; I think Tosches would have been better off just taking one of those ideas and elaborating on them, instead of jumbling all of these ideas into one book. I enjoy his lucious prose style but at some point I just felt frustrated with the novel. I believe the academics--university professors and Dante scholars--would enjoy this book more than the average person looking to read a crime caper. There are parts of this book that I enjoyed--like the scathing rant on the publishing industry--but as a whole the book was disappointing. This is not a historical mystery--I would suggest going elsewhere to read one

A New York Times' reviewer accurately describes Nick Tosches' novel as "kind of a mess, but a splendid, passionate mess." The narrative alternates between the 14th and 21st centuries to tell the story of the stolen original manuscript of Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy, written between 1313 and 1315 (p. 160). After a priest steals the poem from the Vatican, Louie, a tough guy with a fetish for wearing women's lingerie, steals the parchment manuscript from the priest. A 64-year-old diabetic character, Nick Tosches, is then asked to authenticate the several-hundred page document, apparently scrawled by the hand of Dante with the wild "tempest and serenity of creation" (p. 64). While this is the basic plot of Tosches' novel, it is by no means an easy book.

There is more to Tosche's novel than mobsters popping priests for a stolen poem of "incalculable" value (p. 302), and this is precisely where things get interesting. In his first-person narrative, Tosches burns like an inferno, criticizing everything from monotheism, publishers, Oprah's Book Club, mediocrity and even his own editor. In fact, throughout his book, very little escapes the heat of Tosches' impassioned rage. The spectacle of his narrative conflagration, seasoned with profanities, will surely offend some readers, but will attract many others. Does Tosches burn as brightly as Dante? Well, no. But I enjoyed every minute of reading this novel.

G. Merritt

Maybe if you remember this man, Sidona, you might better understand his plight than I did.

The first part of this book is wall to wall confusion, reading like the Italian yellow pages. There are also many quotes in Italian, and these might help aspiring linguists, like me. Otherwise, only a few stalwarts will wade through this first half of the book.

Later, in the second half of the book, the pace picks up some, when Mr. (Signore?) Sidona finally gets caught by the law's so-called long arm. Mr. Tosches originally approached Sidona about a book after his fall from grace, while he was "resting" in an Italian prison. Tosches keeps the ball of Sidona up in the air for a little bit longer, with this book, but maybe Sidona's ball deserves to just fall and come to a final resting point.

I say this because, after all, Sidona wanted to play fast and loose, he took his inherent gifts (he was good with numbers, well educated and an avvocatto, a lawyer, and apparently was a personable sort of fellow with all the contacts he had), but what did he do with these talents? Well, he tried to aggrandize himself, and is this any new story? He ran with the wolves and he paid the price, end of story.

Thanks to Nick Tosches for keeping the ball in the air a little longer. This helps the generations following Sidona and his age cohorts to understand the crazy world which precedes them, like a bad reputation. Diximus.

The exploits of the late international financial magus, Michele Sindona would seem ,indeed, to lend themselves to an explosive expose if not a fascinating, in-depth biography. The "vita" of Michele Sindona comprises alleged associations with a Pope, a President, a Prime Minister or two; numerous world-class bankers; the head of Italy's underground government, P-2; and chiefs of the Sicilian Mafia, the international OCTOPUS of organized crime. Sindona begins in Milan as a tax lawyer in 1948. A decade later, he supposedly controls its stock market and the value of the Italian lira. By 1964 he has formed MONEYREX. This was an awesome currency speculation machine with which PLAYERS could make vast amounts of loot manipulating money rates and Organized Crime...perhaps...laundered billions in rackets-acquired profits (particularly a Golden Triangle-based heroin trade). On the way Sindona himself became the richest man since Marcus Licinius Crassus (owner of silver mines from which Roman specie was minted near the time of the Fall of the Roman Republic) and a dark predecessor to Bill Gates as...briefly...the wealthiest man in the world. Avvocato Sindona's "fortuna" peaks in 1979 when he is indicted (69-99 counts; but whose counting?)in the US for misappropriation of bank funds; collusion in numerous fraud schemes and perjury. The assassination of Italian prosecutor Giorgio Ambrosoli...through wicked offices of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra...lands him in a maximum security prison in Italy. On the morning of March 22, 1986,in Voghera Prison, Sindona dies of cyanide poisoning; whether the coup de grace was murder or suicide no one...including Mr. Tosches... can say with certainty. This is the problem with the book. Myriads of facts, myths, fairy-tales and "fronting" fiction comprise POWER ON EARTH. The reader is getting "the kitchen sink", along with dozens of names, acronyms (of GOOD GUY/BAD GUY & UGLY GUY organizations)and plots within plots that make FOCUS impossible. Tosches could easily have focused on Sindona's...allegedly juicy...role with IOR, the Vatican Bank. Or his heist of the Franklin Bank in New York...the 18th largest bank in the US.. and the subsequent crash. His relation with Roberto Calvi...the man allegedly assassinated in London by Masons for embezzlement; his alliance with Licio Gelli...Maestro Venerabile... of "Propaganda Due" the P-2 Masonic Lodge; or perhaps Stefano Bonate, Chief of the Scilian Mafia. The most illuminating part of the book is chapter 6, "SYSTEMS OF EVIL" where Sindona gives a glimmer of an explanation (pp.86-97)of how criminal...especially drug...money is laundered using numbered accounts, "ghost" banks, shell-company real-estate and currency speculation/manipulation. Francis Ford Coppola "modeled" the sinister P-2/Mafia chieftain "Lucchese" in Godfather III on Sindona (and Gelli). It's said that Ian Fleming concocted his arch-criminal, Ernst Stavro Blofeld from a brew of Sindona and several extremely dangerous Sicilian Mafiosi (SPECTRE's signum was THE OCTOPUS). What's clear is that...disappointingly...the reach of Michele Sindona far exceeds the grasp of journalist Tosches. Though he claims, for two years, to have interviewed the man whom he dramatically calls "The Devil" (chapter I: THE THREE BEASTS), POWER ON EARTH reads like a draft rather than a finished product. When the author reaches for unnecessary literary effects, the results are silly and occasionally baffling. They are unecessary. Sindona was a fascinating, brilliant and no doubt dangerous man. Two of his favorite authors were Machiavelli and Nietzsche. Sindona himself seems to have lived and died BEYOND GOOD and EVIL. Sindona's true story will probably never be written. But I contend that POWER ON EARTH...though not a bad effort...is merely a spring-board to something more astute and incisive. "Behind great fortune...is great crime"; this axiom may be the clue to stories about men like Michele Sindona. It seems an accurate ...if cliched...key to the door of POWER ON EARTH.

The premise of this book about the illegal numbers game, could have been executed SO much better, with the use of more dictionary words, instead of some of the grossest four-letter ones I've ever seen in print. I'm sorry to say, that instead of a "page-turner", I found this writing effort to be more of a "turn-off". Which is a pity, because I feel the story itself had so much promise, and could have been told in a far better fashion.