Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams

Nick Tosches's Dino is a detailed biography of the singer/actor Dean Martin, starting from the immigration of his Italian parents to his early jobs in rural Ohio steel mills all the way through to his extraordinary success in the 1950s and beyond. Despite a lot of vacuous observations ("His son Dino and Dorothy Hamill had divorced in December 1983. Like his marriage to Olivia, it was just not meant to be.") and terrible metaphors ("Tears... were the womanly waters of disgrace."), the book is well-researched and the emptiness and self-absorption that pervaded Martin's life is conveyed in disturbing detail.