AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK SEPTEMBER 2009
DECONSTRUCTING SAMMY:
Music, Money, and Madness
“Birkbeck has killer leads, gripping kickers and sensational descriptions. This
cinematic book reads more like a detective story than a traditional ‘life of.”
— New York Times Book Review
“Tremendous. . . Birkbeck tells the epic of Sammy Davis Jr... from his Harlem
boyhood to his wrenching deathbed (he died of cancer in 1990) in his Beverly
Hills mansion, where various hangers-on, seeing the circling vultures, stripped
his corpse even before it was a corpse.”
— Los Angeles
Times Book Review
“A piece of investigative journalism that unravels what happened to
Davis’ estate, and reveals more about the man...Birkbeck spoke to people that
have never spoken before—and the portrait of Sammy that emerges is difficult,
demanding, and ultimately tragic.”
— NPR's Talk of the Nation
