At fifteen, Sanford Brunson Campbell (1884-1952) became enchanted with the new sounds of ragtime and ran away from his rural Kansas home, hopping a train to Sedalia, Missouri, determined to take piano lessons from a black musician he had never met. Scott Joplin nicknamed his white protege ""The Ragtime Kid."" A composer and entertainer at the dawn of the ragtime era, ""Brun"" was a prime mover in the ragtime revival of the 1940s and helped establish Joplin's prominence as an American virtuoso. Campbell's own legacy was tarnished by his inability to tell a straight story and he was often dismissed as a liar and a clown. Based on his memoirs, musical compositions and correspondence with music industry notables, this first comprehensive biography of Campbell reveals an engaging storyteller and a devotee wholly dedicated to a musical genre that had been given up as dead. His firsthand account of life as an itinerant pianist in the Midwest provides a unique picture of life a century ago.

“We called it THE VUE, and without a doubt, that was the most complimentary nickname Bellevue Hospital ever had.� So begins The View from the Vue, an “entertaining, colorful recall� (Publishers Weekly) of life a half-century ago at New York City’s medical court of last resort.   Between 1959 and 1965, Dr. Larry Karp served as medical student, intern, and resident physician at Bellevue. During these six years, he came to know and understand the people who wended their way through the dingy hallways and roach-infested subterranean passages, and inhabited the sparsely furnished wards of the fabulous hospital whose origins date back to 1811. It’s not surprising that Dr. Karp has never been able to forget The Vue. Writing in a style both human and humorous, he recalls some of the astonishingly funny and dramatic events he lived through, involving bizarre patients and grotesque working conditions. In the process, he gives us a clear picture of what it was like at Bellevue in the early sixties . . . for both doctors and patients.