Born in Newark and schooled in his father's bar, Nick Tosches is the author of acclaimed biographies of Sonny Liston, Dean Martin, the Mafia financier Michele Sindona, and Jerry Lee Lewis; of books about popular music; and of the novels Cut Numbers, Trinities, and In the Hand of Dante. His writings through three decades were collected in The Nick Tosches Reader. He is a contributing editor of Vanity Fair.