Nica's Dream: The Life and Legend of the Jazz Baroness (W.W. Norton), by David Kastin

Horace Silver and Thelonious Monk were inspired to write songs in her honor. And when Charlie Parker died in her hotel suite, gossip columnists and headline writers were busy for weeks. Kathleen Annie Pannonica Rothschild de Koenigswarter, a baroness from one of the world's wealthiest families, was a bejeweled presence on the 1950s New York jazz scene and a patron of bebop long before the music migrated from neon-lit clubs to the Lincoln Center. Music writer David Kastin tells her story in delicious prose, and if he embraces the legend a little too closely, he also vividly captures the essence of her story and the glamour of jazz when it was cutting-edge and hot.