A memoir of her life with Mingus, this love story includes never-before published photographs of Mingus and a special epilogue about the activites Mingus' music has taken on since his death. Was released April 2002 by Pantheon (Random House.) In conjunction with the book publication and Mingus's 80th Birthday year, Sue Mingus and members of the band made numerous appearances at Borders and Barnes & Noble bookstores. The paperback edition was released in April 2003 by Da Capo Press (Perseus Books.) French and German editions are also expected in Fall 2003 with an Italian edition to follow in next spring. It is available in the U.K. through Perseus Books as of September 2003.

Tonight at Noon was one of the "100 Best Books of the Year," chosen by the Los Angeles Times Magazine, December 8, 2002.

Tonight at Noon was among the "Notable Books of the Year 2002," in the New York Times Book Review, December 8, 2002.

Order your copy of Tonight at Noon from Amazon.com. Hardcover / Paperback

More quotes about Tonight At Noon:

"Mingus's body of work is among the most emotionally protean, with one of
the most varied and informed musical pedigrees in American history. Sue
Mingus's telling and moving memoir "Tonight at Noon" has the emotional
fluency and power of Mingus' own music."
--Aram Saroyan, L.A. Times

"A brilliant memoir.... That the two Minguses, complete opposites, ever
managed to co-exist is astonishing, and her every-pore portrait of the
relationship is indelible. A classic work."
--Whitney Balliett, critic, New Yorker

"Tonight At Noon by Sue Mingus is a superbly poignant love story, an
eloquent biographical sketch of the great jazz master Charles Mingus, and
an elegy for the kind of human loss all of us undergo."
--Harold Bloom, literary critic, author of "Genius," "Shakespeare, the Invention of the Human"

"TONIGHT AT NOON may well qualify as one of the great books ever written
about the daily life of a jazz genius.... The jazz greats of his time
course through this book. So too does the astonishing humor, anger,
brilliance, and terrible oddness of this man who made some of the greatest
music of his time in any musical genre. Whether or not one should 'trust'
the exactitude of such exhaustive reports and conversations over such a
long period, only a fool would doubt the precision and veracity of her
portrait of her late husband's ideas and soul. Few people have ever proved their fealty
more than Sue Graham Mingus. Along with that, it's a wildly vivid and readable book."
--The Buffalo News

"Dazzling! It has momentum like a car without brakes."
--Janet Coleman, co-author of "Mingus Mingus"

"A wonderful piece of writing, moving and unflinching. "Bravery" is an
odd word to use in relation to art, but there is a unique kind of courage
and fearlessness in revealing this much of herself and her
relationship.... The scale of the love and the fury described is totally
involving. It also provides a vivid sense of all that had to be overcome
to create such great and timeless music."
--Elvis Costello

"The best portrait of the artist we're likely to possess, as well as an
acute, often comical account of what can happen when worlds-- racial,
social, and temperamental-- collide... A jewel of a book."
--Newsday

"It's a superb book, a wonderfully-written love story and an amazing
glimpse into the life of a profound man and his music."
--James McBride, author of "The Color of Water"

"Her spiky, cross-riffing reminiscence honors not just a lasting musical
genius but also a woman who isn't afraid both to live and to give on a
grand scale."
--Elle Magazine

"[An] absorbing story."
--The New York Times Book Review

"It's an unqualifid masterpiece. I couldn't put it down. It will set new
standards in the future for such personal memoirs."
-- Gunther Schuller, Pulitzer prize-winning composer, conductor, author

"Sue Mingus's searing memoir, like Charles MIngus's compositions, is rooted
in the blues, mixing the sad with the celebratory.... LIke a savvy film
director, she opens her prologue with a jolting close-up of herself ,
immersed in the freezing waters of the Ganges in India, scattering Mingus'
cremated remains to the wind.... No one could have predicted that this
oddest of odd couples would one day forge one of the most durable alliances
in jazz history."
--Boston Globe

"By placing his explosive career in the context of their life together, Sue
Mingus succeeds where his biographers have failed in showing how he
transcended, personally and artistically, the anecdotes his outsized behavior generated."
--Weekly Standard

"They can put all the biographies on the back shelf. Sue Mingus has done
what no one else could or will do: capture Mingus's voice in all his difficulty and heart...
'--Rafi Zabor, author of "The Bear Comes Home"

"Her focus is brilliant and acute throughout this riveting book."
--Jazz Times

"An awesome accomplisment. A real page-turner. Did she have a
tape-recorder strapped to her brassiere?"
--Hermine Basnight, writer

"Eloquent."
--Newsweek

"This is a powerful and moving book, unsparing in its portrayal of the
devastation caused by Lou Gehrig's disease and charged with insight into
the personality of a jazz great."
--Publishers Weekly

"(Sue Mingus) shares her experience of something great, something horrible
and, really, just something human. The depiction of how intensely life can
be lived should resonate with many teenagers."
--School Library Journal

"Superbly written book. It's funny, lyrical, passionate, moving-- even in
the dark parts it's very funny..."
--Myra Friedman, author "Buried Alive"

"Her life would make a good movie; certainly it made for a great autobiography."
--Milwaukee City Life Style

"The author communicates beautifully the painful ambivalence caretakers
feel. She loves her husband fiercely, yet often considers killing him.
Written with style, passion, love and music."
--Kirkus Reviews

"In spare, moving words she describes how Mingus and she clung to life,
humor and hope until the end."
--The Washington Post

'A compelling tale dominated by Charles Mingus's charisma even as he lay
dying. Moving along at a cinematic pace, Sue Mingus takes you from smoky
Big Apple jazz clubs to dark voodoo clinics in Mexico to the Ganges in
India where she performs a final Hindu ritual for her dead husband. In a
visceral, sometimes darkly humorous style, she paints a rich, layered
portrait of the artist... not only a superb epitaph but an eloquent
reminder that the Mingus legacy is alive and well."
--Hartford Courant