Lar­ry Tye is a for­mer reporter at The Boston Globe, off now writ­ing books and run­ning a Boston-based fel­low­ship pro­gram for health jour­nal­ists. The Jazzmen is his ninth book, with oth­ers includ­ing Home Lands, the upbeat tale of a thriv­ing Jew­ish dias­po­ra; Super­man, the biog­ra­phy of America’s longest-last­ing (Jew­ish) hero; and Bob­by Kennedy, which looks at RFK’s trans­for­ma­tion from Joe McCarthy’s pro­tege to a lib­er­al icon.