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Deconstructing Sammy
''Deconstructing Sammy'' is a book by author Matt Birkbeck about the life and death of Sammy Davis Jr. and the subsequent efforts to restore his legacy. Published in September 2008 by Amistad/HarperCollins the book follows the efforts of a Pennsylvania lawyer and former Assistant U.S. Attorney, Albert "Sonny" Murray Jr., who was hired in 1994 by Sammy's poverty-stricken wife Altovise to help resolve Sammy's debts. Upon his death from cancer in 1990, Sammy Davis Jr. owed over $15 million, of which $7 million was owed to the Internal Revenue Service. Murray spent seven years representing the Davis estate, from 1994 to 2001, during which time he resolved the debts, restored Sammy's legacy and earned Sammy a posthumous Grammy Award in 2001. Deconstructing Sammy reveals Sammy Davis Jr. as a brilliant yet tragic figure in American culture. ''The New York Times'' in a December 2008 review hailed the book as "Gripping" and "Sensational." The ''Los Angeles Times'' called ''Deconstructi ...
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Matt Birkbeck
Matt Birkbeck (born Brooklyn, N.Y.) is an American investigative journalist and author. He is best known for his books ''A Beautiful Child'' (2004), which told the tragic story of "Sharon Marshall" and her "father" Franklin Delano Floyd, and the sequel ''Finding Sharon'' (2018), which is a memoir about his ten-year effort, along with the FBI and National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, to find Sharon's true identity. Both books were adapted by Netflix for the 2022 documentary ''Girl in the Picture'', for which Birkbeck is executive producer. He also wrote the critically acclaimed ''Deconstructing Sammy'' (2008) about the life of Sammy Davis Jr. and efforts to resolve his debts and his legacy following his death in 1990, ''The Quiet Don: The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino'' (2013), about the influential Mafia boss Russell Bufalino, and he also authored ''A Deadly Secret: The Bizarre and Chilling Story of Robert Durst, A Deadly Secret'' (2002/2015), about ...
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Sammy Davis Jr
Samuel George Davis Jr. (December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990) was an American singer, dancer, actor, comedian, film producer and television director. At age three, Davis began his career in vaudeville with his father Sammy Davis Sr. and the Will Mastin Trio, which toured nationally, and his film career began in 1933. After military service, Davis returned to the trio and became an overnight sensation following a nightclub performance at Ciro's (in West Hollywood) after the 1951 Academy Awards. With the trio, he became a recording artist. In 1954, at the age of 29, he lost his left eye in a car accident. Several years later, he converted to Judaism, finding commonalities between the oppression experienced by African-American and Jewish communities.Sammy Davis Jr. Biography
Biography.com. Retrieved June 6, 20 ...
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New Pittsburgh Courier
The ''New Pittsburgh Courier'' is a weekly African-American newspaper based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It is owned by Real Times. The newspaper is named after the original ''Pittsburgh Courier'' (1907–65), which in the 1930s and 1940s was one of the largest and most influential African-American newspapers in the country, with a nationwide circulation of more than 350,000. After circulation declines in the 1950s and 1960s, the original ''Courier'' was purchased in 1965 by John H. Sengstacke, publisher of '' The Chicago Daily Defender,'' in 1966. He reorganized the paper under a new name—the ''New Pittsburgh Courier''—to avoid paying several outstanding tax bills and invoices. He later commented: He re-opened it in 1967 under the new name. The ''New Pittsburgh Courier'' joined Sengstacke's three other newspapers in a chain of prominent African-American publications, including the ''Defender''. In 1974 Sengstacke appointed Hazel B. Garland as the new edit ...
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Amistad (publishing)
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Corp. The name is a combination of several publishing firm names: Harper & Row, an American publishing company acquired in 1987—whose own name was the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers (founded in 1817) and Row, Peterson & Company—together with Scottish publishing company William Collins, Sons (founded in 1819), acquired in 1989. The worldwide CEO of HarperCollins is Brian Murray. HarperCollins has publishing groups in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, India, and China. The company publishes many different imprints, both former independent publishing houses and new imprints. History Collins Harper Mergers and acquisitions Collins was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporat ...
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HarperCollins
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Corp. The name is a combination of several publishing firm names: Harper & Row, an American publishing company acquired in 1987—whose own name was the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers (founded in 1817) and Row, Peterson & Company—together with Scottish publishing company William Collins, Sons (founded in 1819), acquired in 1989. The worldwide CEO of HarperCollins is Brian Murray. HarperCollins has publishing groups in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, India, and China. The company publishes many different imprints, both former independent publishing houses and new imprints. History Collins Harper Mergers and acquisitions Collins was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News ...
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Altovise Davis
Altovise Joanne Davis ( Gore; August 30, 1943 – March 14, 2009) was an American entertainer, best known for being Sammy Davis Jr.'s third wife. Biography Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, as Altovise Joanne Gore, she was raised in Brooklyn, New York. A life member of The Actors Studio, Gore worked during the 1960s as a chorus-line dancer in various musical shows both in London and on Broadway. Her relationship with Sammy Davis Jr. started in 1968 while they were working in the same show. They were married in a Philadelphia courthouse by the Rev. Jesse Jackson on May 11, 1970, and adopted a son, Manny, in 1989. Sammy Davis Jr. died from throat cancer on May 16, 1990, five days after their 20th wedding anniversary. Television and film roles In the 1970s and 1980s Altovise Davis made a few guest appearances in major TV series such as ''Charlie's Angels'' and ''CHiPs'' and minor roles in films such as ''Welcome to Arrow Beach'' (1974), '' Kingdom of the Spiders'' (19 ...
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Grammy Award
The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the music industry worldwide. It was originally called the Gramophone Awards, as the trophy depicts a gilded gramophone. The Grammys are the first of the Big Three networks' major music awards held annually, and is considered one of the four major annual American entertainment awards, alongside the Academy Awards (for films), the Emmy Awards (for television), and the Tony Awards (for theater). The first Grammy Awards ceremony was held on May 4, 1959, to honor the musical accomplishments of performers for the year 1958. After the 2011 ceremony, the Recording Academy overhauled many Grammy Award categories for 2012. History The Grammys had their origin in the Hollywood Walk of Fame project in the 1950s. ...
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The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as '' The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national "newspaper of record". For print it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 1896, through a dual-class share structure after its shares became publicly traded. A. G. Sulzberger, the paper's publisher and the company's chairman, is the fifth generation of the family to head the p ...
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Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States. The publication has won more than 40 Pulitzer Prizes. It is owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong and published by the Times Mirror Company. The newspaper’s coverage emphasizes California and especially Southern California stories. In the 19th century, the paper developed a reputation for civic boosterism and opposition to labor unions, the latter of which led to the bombing of its headquarters in 1910. The paper's profile grew substantially in the 1960s under publisher Otis Chandler, who adopted a more national focus. In recent decades the paper's readership has declined, and it has been beset by a series of ownership changes, staff reductions, and other controversies. In January 2018, the paper's staff voted to unionize ...
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Tennessee Tribune
The ''Tennessee Tribune'' is an African-American newspaper in Nashville Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and the ..., Tennessee. Its circulation is statewide - Nashville, Chattanooga, Knoxville and Memphis, Tennessee. It was founded in 1991 by Rosetta Irvin Miller-Perry. Miller-Perry received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Newspaper Publishers Association in 2019. References African-American newspapers Mass media in Nashville, Tennessee Newspapers published in Tennessee Newspapers established in 1992 1992 establishments in Tennessee African-American history in Nashville, Tennessee {{Tennessee-newspaper-stub ...
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2008 Non-fiction Books
8 (eight) is the natural number following 7 and preceding 9. In mathematics 8 is: * a composite number, its proper divisors being , , and . It is twice 4 or four times 2. * a power of two, being 2 (two cubed), and is the first number of the form , being an integer greater than 1. * the first number which is neither prime nor semiprime. * the base of the octal number system, which is mostly used with computers. In octal, one digit represents three bits. In modern computers, a byte is a grouping of eight bits, also called an octet. * a Fibonacci number, being plus . The next Fibonacci number is . 8 is the only positive Fibonacci number, aside from 1, that is a perfect cube. * the only nonzero perfect power that is one less than another perfect power, by Mihăilescu's Theorem. * the order of the smallest non-abelian group all of whose subgroups are normal. * the dimension of the octonions and is the highest possible dimension of a normed division algebra. * the first numb ...
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Books About Entertainers
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arrangement is ''codex'' (plural, ''codices''). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page. As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. Each part of Aristotle's ''Physics'' is called ...
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