Friedwald's central point is that Sinatra had more to do with shaping the standard repertoire of American popular music than anybody else. "It would be pointless to do a Frank Sinatra Songbook," says Friedwald, because "it would be redundant…It's true that no one introduced more standards than Fred Astaire, who had all the major Broadway legends almost simultaneously penning film scores for him. But no performer turned more songs into standards than Sinatra, including a great many of the numbers written for Astaire."

Friedwald has two strengths as a writer. The first and most notable is voice. Friedwald writes with wit, humor and informality. (And believe me, in a 500-page book of musical analysis, that's important.) For example, when discussing Sinatra's first up-tempo recording for Tommy Dorsey ("Oh, Look at Me Now"), Friedwald explains Dorsey's anxiety about assigning his star baladeer a swing number. "Not to worry," says Friedwald, "Francis takes to swinging the way King Kong takes to climbing skyscrapers." Later, in discussing "The Nearness of You" (from the CD version of Nice 'n' Easy) Friedwald says, "Sinatra has never sounded more convincingly blue and pensive; this is make-out music no less pleasurable than the activity it's designed to accompany." You see what I mean about Friedwald's voice.

Friedwald's other great strength is not just that he's an indefatigable researcher, but that he knows what to research. He understands that Sinatra could not have accomplished what he did without the overwhelming talents of his collaborators. Long sections of the book, therefore, are devoted to Tommy Dorsey, Axel Stordahl (Sinatra's primary arranger during the Columbia years), Nelson Riddle, Billy May, Gordon Jenkins, Don Costa, and others. Friedwald discusses these arrangers' backgrounds, temperaments, working methods and stylistic differences in unprecedented detail. By doing so, he is able to critique Sinatra's memorable albums more insightfully than anybody else.

On those rare occasions when Friedwald addresses biographical details, his point is invariably to minimize their significance. Sinatra's declining popularity around 1950, for example, has typically been attributed to bad temper and bad living – too much partying, too much drinking, and too much philandering. It all played havoc with his voice and public persona, or so say the critics. But Friedwald disputes that. He attributes Sinatra's decline to changes in the music industry – and at Columbia Records specifically. And he's extremely detailed in his supporting arguments. He discusses Sinatra's recordings from this era in great detail – both his Columbia recordings and his radio transcriptions – to demonstrate that the fault wasn't primarily with The Voice but with how the studio was using it. Friedwald's argument becomes well nigh unassailable when he points out that Sinatra's popularity returned when he gained more control of his material at Capitol.

Perhaps the best thing to be said about this book is that it prompts us to revisit all those Sinatra albums with new ears and new minds.

I only have one reservation about the book. The text is 516 pages. The first 350 are wonderful. The last 165 are not. In the 1970s and beyond, Sinatra's legend grew as quickly as his skills deteriorated. His intonation, which became a little suspect in the '60s, grew intolerable in the '70s. And yet Friedwald discusses the post-retirement Sinatra (remember Sinatra "retired" from show business in 1971) in almost as much detail as the earlier Sinatra. I don't understand that. The post-retirement Sinatra did nothing to shape popular music. If anything, he was shaped by it. His latter-day success has everything to do with his public persona and hardly anything to do with his music. I suspect Friedwald was so deep into his subject that he couldn't let it go. But even so, this is by far the best book ever written about Sinatra, and I highly recommend it.