The name of Isaac Dunaevsky (1900-1955) is inscribed in golden letters in the history of Russian popular music. For some, his songs and melodies evoke nostalgia for the glorious past, for others - hostility towards Soviet ideology, which the composer enthusiastically praised. The book of the famous journalist and playwright Dmitry Minchenko, written on the basis of archival documents, memoirs and letters from Dunaevsky himself and his relatives, brings clarity to these disputes. The first version of the biography, published in 1998, received the Irina Arkhipova Foundation Award as the best book of the decade about music and musicians. The new edition is supplemented with materials discovered in recent years.