The oldest daughter of revered composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein offers a rare take a look at her father for the centennial of his birth inside a deeply intimate and broadly evocative memoir.

The composer of Around town and West Part Story, chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic, television star, humanitarian, friend from the powerful and influential, and the life of every party, Leonard Bernstein was an enormous celebrity during among the headiest periods of American cultural lifestyle, about Famous Dad Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein as well as the most protean musician in twentieth century America.

But to his eldest little girl, Jamie, he was above all the person in the scratchy dark brown bathrobe who smelled of tobacco; the jokester and compulsive instructor who enthused about Beethoven as well as the Beatles; the insomniac whose 4 a.m. composing breaks included spooning baby meals from the jar. He taught his girl to love the world in all its beauty and complexity. In public and private, Lenny was larger than life.

In Famous Dad Lady, Bernstein mines the emotional depths of her years as a child and invites us into her family’s private world. A fantastic set of heroes populates the Bernsteins’ lives, including: the Kennedys, Mike Nichols, John Lennon, Richard Avedon, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins, and Betty (Lauren) Bacall.

An intoxicating tale, Famous Father Woman is a romantic meditation on a complex and occasionally troubled guy, the family members he raised, and the music he composed that became the soundtrack to their entwined lives. Deeply moving and often amusing, Bernstein’s beautifully created memoir is a superb American tale about one of the biggest Americans of the modern age.