Prologue: Tiptoeing up the mountain -- There will be a tomorrow -- Kind of like television roulette -- A tight suitcase -- It's all in the timing -- The difference between love and lust -- A gesture from God -- And so it has come to this -- Epilogue: Like the widow at a funeral

Twenty years in the making, Zemhe and Thomas's book examines "one of the most inscrutable figures in entertainment history: a man whobrought so much joy and laughter to so many millions but was himself exceedingly shy and private. Zehme traces Carson's rise from a magic-obsessed Nebraska boy to a Navy ensign in World War II to a burgeoning radio and TV personality to, eventually, host of The Tonight Show--which he transformed, along with the entirety of American popular culture, over the next three decades--