Yet Eckstine's musical tragedy, of being too hot, is a uniting theme of Hajdu's work, which in its best moments explores the edges of musical and cultural classifications and formally defined eras.
Hajdu, the music critic for The New Republic and a professor at the Columbia University School of Journalism, mainly focuses on the latter implications of his title: how a double-page photo in Time magazine sabotaged Eckstine's career.