Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr.

When Sammy Davis, Jr. published his autobiography in 1965, it was an immediate long-running bestseller as well as a revelation. Yes I Can describes Sammy Davis's personal conviction, the view of success that both propelled him to stardom from ghetto obscurity and served as his armor against racism.

Biographies & Memoirs

Davis Jr., Sammy

Boyar, Burt

Boyar, Jane

Eddie Murphy

Arts & Literature

Farrar. Straus & Giroux

Sammy Davis, Jr. (1925-90) rose from childhood stardom on the vaudeville stage to become one of the most famous African American entertainers of the 1950s and '60s (and the only black member of Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack). At the same time, he spent most of his career surrounded by controversy and ridicule--over his affairs with white film stars, his 1960 marriage to Swedish actress May Britt, his conversion to Judaism, his closeness to the Kennedys (and later Richard Nixon), and his problems with alcohol and drugs. When Davis published his first memoir, Yes, I Can, in 1965, it was a critical and popular success--acclaimed for a candor and thoughtfulness rare in celebrity autobiographies and for its painful evocation of life as a black peformer in segregated America. Davis's 1980 memoir, Why Me?, laid bare Davis's troubled relationship to the Kennedys, his ambivalence toward the Black Pride movement, the end of his marriage to Britt (and his complex open marriage with Altovise Davis), and his flamboyant, self-loathing misbehavior, from ruinous extravagance to flirtations with Satanism. Davis's co-writer Burt Boyar has revised Davis's memoirs, incorporating material from unpublished interviews, and has added a new introduction and epilogue. The result is a testament to an unacknowledged--often uncomfortable--leader in the struggle for racial equality.

Sammy: The Autobiography of Sammy Davis, Jr.

Humor & Entertainment

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

Yes, I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr.

Davis, Sammy

World Class

Sports & Outdoors

Miscellaneous

Marbella House

Meet the ten best tennis players in the world, a group of ruthless competitors who probe one another's weaknesses on the court but are loyal comrades off it - a band of brothers who know how to work, to live and how to enjoy life. This is a book about winning - not only at sport but at life.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Boyar, Jane. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Boyar, Jane