My only disappointment (not enough to deduct a star) stems from the fact that Chuck Haddix used only 160 pages to cover a life meriting ten times that number. Due to the brevity, there are too many omissions for the book to serve as a basic reference. Reading like an extended essay, the work is especially well researched and informative when dealing with events in Parker's (and Haddix's) hometown of Kansas City.Having devoured every previously published biography of Charlie "Bird" Parker (and those of figures close to him such as Chan Richardson Parker, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie), I was a bit frustrated to read once again many anecdotes that seem to appear in each one, in some cases verbatim. A reader less familiar with the subject, however, will find the book to be an outstanding overview of a life almost unbearably triumphant and tragic. Haddix is focused, objective, well organized, appropriately dispassionate, highly factual, and non-judgmental. This approach to history maximizes impact on the reader by letting the facts speak for themselves, unencumbered by the digressions, adjectives and meaningless commentary that dilute lesser works.There are significant new facts documented, especially concerning Bird's childhood in Kansas City, Kansas (yes he was born there and not in Missouri, where he came of age and acquired his foundation in music), his parents and their relationship with each other, his early, unsuccessful marriage to Rebecca Ruffin, and his returns to visit his mother in Kansas City.Bird is arguably the greatest improvisor in jazz history. Notoriously unreliable throughout his career and dead at 34 from the accumulated effects of substance abuse, Bird nevertheless became the pied piper whose alto saxophone led jazz music from its New Orleans' roots and the stifling conventions of the Swing era, through the Bebop revolution, to jazz music's highly aesthetic modern form. Kudos to Chuck Haddix for letting us relive Bird's historic journey.