MixedThe New York Times Book Review[Berlin\'s] miraculous ascent makes up the breeziest sequence in James Kaplan’s empathic biography. Like his subject, though, Kaplan ultimately finds this pace impossible to maintain ... Kaplan, a longtime entertainment journalist and the author of a well-regarded two-volume biography of Frank Sinatra, is generally on surer footing with Berlin’s lyrics ... However, Kaplan goes easy on musicological analysis ... Despite this book’s inclusion in Yale University Press’s Jewish Lives series of biographies, Kaplan doesn’t particularly dwell on the fact that the author of \'White Christmas\' and \'Easter Parade\' was born Israel Baline in Belarus, the son of a cantor.
