King of the Night: The Life of Johnny Carson

Johnny Carson was a phenomenon, the most successful performer in the history of television. For the better part of three decades, the enormously popular host of "The Tonight Show" was welcomed into millions of American homes — as a friend, an entertainer, and an inexhaustibly sage and witty commentator on our lives and times. But there was a dark side to this charming and inscrutable enigma that only those closest to Carson ever saw — a sadness, mistrust, and cruelty behind the glitter and gl…