A Mobster’s Mensch

James Gandolfini would have been the first person to wonder why anyone would read a book about him, judging from a new biography, Gandolfini: Jim, Tony, and the Life of a Legend. This was a performer whose sense of self-worth, depending on the day, ranged from unfeigned humility to desperate insecurity to full-on self-loathing. But even he would have recognized why we care: The Sopranos, the game-changing HBO series the actor anchored for a decade as Tony Soprano, the Jersey Mob boss who stands alongside Captain Ahab, Jay Gatsby, and Michael Corleone in the pantheon of all-American antiheroes.