Living Legend

The King of Calypso delivers a memoir

Harry Belafonte was more than a handsome matinee idol and platinum-selling singer (the first artist in history to sell more than 1 million LPs), he was an activist with a conscience that placed him at the forefront of the civil rights movement (he and best friend Sidney Poitier were followed and threatened by the KKK in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964). His new memoir, My Song ($30, Knopf), travels from his impoverished origins in Harlem and Jamaica to his status as one of the world’s most successful entertainers befriending the famous and infamous, including Marlon Brando, Eleanor Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, and Fidel Castro. Both revealing and inspiring, Belafonte shows that fame, fortune, and social responsibility are not mutually exclusive.