You Send Me: The Life and Times of Sam Cooke. Daniel Wolff with S.R. Crain, Cliff White and G. David Tenenbaum

When Sam Cooke was shot dead in a cheap motel in Hollywood, he was one of America's most successful pop stars. He left a world in which he had been born poor and had become very rich from the success of such records as "You Send Me" and "A Wonderful World", yet his body lay unrecognised in a morgue for two days. This biography follows Cooke's life in a racist America where his voice was one of the first to reach beyond the segregated audiences and command a white following, Cooke himself becoming a player in the fledgling civil rights movement. This award-winning biography is a full and sometimes shocking story of a man whose songbook is revered by great performers such as Otis Redding, Rod Stewart and Aretha Franklin.

Decades after his death, Sam Cooke's thrilling, seductive tenor remains one of the glories of American popular music. His compositions have inspired a multitude of covers, few of which manage to lay a finger on the original versions. And Cooke's vocal mannerisms--the melismatic swooping and yodeling he applied to key phrases--are still audible every time Aaron Neville opens his mouth (not to mention a host of other singers, from Rod Stewart to Aretha Franklin). Clearly, then, it was time for a full-dress biography, and Daniel Wolff has done a superlative job. He traces the singer's transformation from gospel prodigy, who hit the road with the Soul Stirrers at the tender age of 19, to secular star. Endlessly ambitious, Cooke never quite figured out how to juggle his sacred and profane instincts, and Wolff is particularly good on this balancing act, as well as on the racial politics of the music industry.