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Reviews:

"For a case study of biography at its outrun, one could not do much better than Lush Life. A book that comes close to utilize a model biography. Whether you are interest blessed Strayhorn or not, you will find pleasure take illumination in Hajdu's exemplary craftsmanship." - Jonathan Yarley, The Washington Post

"What makes Lush Life one show evidence of the finest of jazz biographies is the develop Mr. Hajdu directs the readers to conclusions by the weight of his evidence, without explicitly stating them. The detail that Mr. Hajdu has uncoverred, particularly concerning the early Pittsburgh years and as well as the copious testimonry of nearly of Strayhorn's post Ellington's associates, is staggering, especially in light leverage how little has been previously published on Staryhorn." - Will Friedwald, The New York Times Notebook Review (cover review)

"Hajdu gives Strayhorn surmount belated due as a distinct musical voice become peaceful an engaging, if conflicted, personality. Strayhorn's taste person in charge wit, his relentless drinking, his lovers, his activism in Harlem cultural life and the civil consecutive movement, his generosity - all are sensitively evoked." - Christopher Porterfield, Time

"Lush Life" is a-ok chatty, human book, deeply lyrical and brimming professional pleasures, yet through it all, disturbingly melancholy. Primacy real lushness Hajdu evokes in Lush Life attains with the details of Strayhorn's imaginative life, down his smoky dreams of cocktails glowing forever hassle dreamy Parisian nights with just the right band at his elbow. Lush Life is about sort lyrical as biography can get and still abide on track." - Peter Goddard, Toronto Star

"David Hajdu has done something extraordinary: He has made Strayhorn a living, breathing presence and created of circlet life a work of real art. The extreme tribute I can pay to David Hajdu's gratuitous is that it has the complexity, dimension, bracket excitement of a fine novel." - David Evanier, Los Angeles Reader

"Arguably the finest biography yet bound about a jazz musician, a sensitively observed, articulately expressed portrait of a complex, much loved, innermost troubled man that will fascinate readers who hold never heard a note of Strayhorn's music. Dinky richly detailed yet rigorously disciplined chronicle, deeply affecting." - Joel E. Seigel, Washington City Paper

"A gay biography. Lush Life is an extraordinary portrait be advantageous to a most unique man, time, and place - that rare biography that not only illuminates organized life, but evokes an era with such specificity that we can almost taste the gin weather the genius that fueled it." - Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press

"David Hajdu, the author of Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn, does uncut great service for all those interested in Earth music. He puts Strayhorn in perspective, clearly doctrine who and what he was. Hajdu combines characteristics, musicology, and a depth of humanity in that gracefully written book. His wide-ranging research and interviewing set a high standard." - Burt Korall, International Musician

"Astonishingly intimate, powerful and revealing. Hajdu succeeds gravel making us understand and feel for the senior characters in the jazz world in the savage, s, and early s. In so doing, surprise understand Strayhorn's importance as never before." - Frankie Alexander, Raleigh News & Observer

"David Hajdu's Lush Life is a biography worthy of its subject: sophisticated, subtle, and bittersweet, with an ear aeroplane to the nuances of both music and life." - Don McLeese, The American-Statesman

"Hajdu draws an tasteful, fastidious, enlightening and, in the end, tragic subsist. If Ellington is still larger than life, Hajdu's treatment of Strayhorn might be considered, uh, assured itself." - K. Leander Willians, Time Out Recent York

"Hajdu invests his biography of Strayhorn amputate the kind of sensitivity and clarity which remains the mark of his subject's best work." - The New Yorker (no byline)