John Ridley is a famous American writer, screenwriter and film producer. His novels Love is a Racket (1998), Everybody Smokes in Hell (1999), but above all Stray Dogs (1997) brought him worldwide fame: the book became the basis for the psychological thriller U-Turn, directed by cult director Oliver Stone and starring Sean Penn, Jennifer Lopez and Nick Nolte. Ridley's strongest asset is storytelling. He skillfully weaves intrigue, twisting the plot into an incredibly elastic spring, which he releases in the right place and at the right time. “One’s own among strangers, another’s among one’s own” is Ridley’s favorite type of conflict. In the novel “The Path to Glory, or Conversations with Mann,” the outsiders are the world of show business, where the hero strives, and the insiders are New York Harlem, from where he dreams of escaping. Among the book's characters, whose characters are depicted expressively and mercilessly, are Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Ed Sullivan, Frank Costello and many other real stars and crime bosses of America in the 1950s and 1960s.