Rating: 
Summary: Excellent read
Review: This book has a lot of new information to offer, different by far than any of the other books released thus far on this event. However, at first, I was surprised at how many of the "big" arguments offered by other authors were not addressed in depth. But as you read through the book you see that the author is offering his own perspective based on his own research.I am also curious as to who exactly cooperated with the author on this book. He states that there are many sources that cannot be identified. Given the minimal discussion given to issues such as Diana's suspected pregnancy and the conspiracy argument explored in "Death of a Princess," it would not surprise me if they were highly placed figures. At any rate, we will probably never know. I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in this event.
Rating:
Summary: All my questions were answered.
Review: So much happened so quickly a year ago this month...not being a regular "people watcher" left me with many unanswered questions about what happened. This book answered them. Were they really getting married? Did she regain consciousness and have last words that only were known to Dodi Fayed's father? And why was this man acting as if Diana somehow belonged to him? Was there ever a chance that she could have survived? It is a violent book about an accident that, given all the circumstances of that night, was bound to happen. How could she have put her life into the hands of such reckless people? Because she felt loved...perhaps for the first time. But, unfortunately, one begins to understand while reading this book that Dodi Fayed was an immature, reckless man who surrounded himself with much of the same. I believe that she began realizing that only hours before her tragic death. Now I can watch the anniversary specials feeling as if I know the real story.
Rating: 
Summary: A Life Lived - A Life Wasted - A Love Lost
Review: Diana's death left such personal voids in so many lives, from those who knew her to those who did not. This book reaffirms every emotion when we first learned of the Princess' untimely death. Unfortunately, it now seems even more senseless and tragic, as well as inevitable. Like the heroine of a greek tragedy, Diana exhibited a childlike naivete where people, particularly men, were concerned. Despite all her charitable efforts, loneliness consumed her. In her quest to find true love she appeared blinded and pitiable, portraying an almost prepubescent-like caricature of the Diana we thought we knew. How sad it had to end here in what seems to be the middle of her story. I, as well as so many others, would have loved to have seen her overcome the demons that haunted her. And in the end, as we had hoped in the beginning of her fairytale, to live happily ever after.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: Just plain old great.Never heard of this dude,but but grabs me and brings me in.Her death was a great tradegy.By the way,It's Diana Princess of Wales,not Princess of Whales,doinkhead
Rating: 
Summary: A Big Swing and a Miss
Review: Christopher Andersen writes one of the most gripping and emotional first chapters I have ever read. However, Andersen needlessly defuses the emotion by rehashing already known facts of Diana's life with her parents, the Royal Family and Charles. Only after wasting lots of pages going over old ground does Andersen get back to the point of the book: The Day Diana died. It would have been a much stronger book had Andersen stuck to his premise, and wrote a day by day account about how the Media, government, public, and Royal family dealt with Diana's death, and how their actions and reactions affect the way the public views Diana, the Royal Family and the media.
Rating:
Summary: Skillfully rendered visit to a place I hoped never to go.
Review: Reading The Day Diana Died was like looking at something so sad that you almost believed if you could last until the end of it, it would all go away. The details were vividly and skillfully rendered in such a way that you could imagine how she felt as the car leapt out over the pavement and sailed into the tunnel -- realizing at some awful moment that something was terribly wrong. She must have been terrified and it allowed us to be terrified for her. It is ironic too that the book shows us, in the long run, that Mohammed Al Fayed - with his arriviste ways and his self-serving conspiracy theories and not the paparazzi, may have been the instrument that brought this great sadness onto the world. The whole evening that lead to that awful moment was clearly described and there is some relief in knowing that she was not about to marry - that she looked so stressed leaving the Ritz- not because of the paparazzi but because Dodi was clearly planning to ask a question she dreaded answering. The sense that if he had been more patient creeps into the picture and one has to ask would it have been different if he had not tried so hard to have his way. What if they had simply stayed at the Ritz -as his father had suggested? What if he had not been so anxious to win for himself the princess the world adored long before he entered the picture. The book raises these what-ifs and you begin to realize their brief therapeutic function. But while the pain of loss may be eased, in small doses, by what-ifs -- they can only briefly stop the sadness. In the end they simply cannot undo the reality. There will be a moment of sympathy for Prince Charles as well - learning the lesson of too little too late - but this doesn't absolve or excuse his part in the whole mess - it simply allows us to feel a little less angry at him for his long time bad behavior. A quote I read recently, in another book, made me think of Diana and it took me away from the last page of this necessary and thoughtfully wrtten book with this: "What matters it went before or after --Now with myself I will begin and end." A apt coment on the short life of Diana, Princess of Wales and of grief. This is a biography of a tragedy that may never be fully accepted or understood - we are fortunate someone has written it with such care and respect.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent and bittersweet
Review: This book gives an insight to both Princess Diana and theRoyal family. Was she wearing any "royal" jewels, and"no Royal" was to go to Paris to bring Diana's body back from Paris are just two of the interesting and startling facts surrounding the response by Queen Elizabeth and others of the Royal family to Diana's death. Who was behind the hanging of the flag at half staff, was Diana in love and would she marry again are all put to rest in this insightful, well researched and bittersweet book. This book is a MUST to help all of us who are still dealing with the loss of one of the most beatiful and compassionate woman... Diana, Princess of Wales and our hearts.
Rating: 
Summary: Andersen does a good job
Review: I've never been one to read many celebrity biographies because I thought, "So what? They're rich; they're famous, and I couldn't care less about them." But as so many seem to think, so thought I; Diana was different. I had heard alot of talk about this book, and the fact that it took at least a year to write (so many of the others were out in a couple of months) made me believe Andersen and his reaserchers put a valid amount of effort into seeking out the facts. I liked the book. It's not a wonderful piece of literature (he repeats himself way too often. I have a bad memory, but even I didn't need to be reminded three and four times about certain events)but it suffices for nice tribute to Diana's often lonely but so generously led life. Before I read this novel I wasn't sure how I stood on the issue of Dodi's father. I didn't understand the things he chose to do in the wake of his son's and Diana's death. However, if it is true that he made it a goal to set Diana up with Dodi in an effort to thumb his nose at England, then I hope he goes to sleep at night in his satin sheets with a guilty conscience. I already knew before I read this book that people seemed to make a habit of using Diana; Muhammed is just one more added to the list. Andersen's first chapter and closing chapter (in particular)are exceptional, I only wish he had stuck to the same style for that which came between.
Rating:
Summary: Canonization Effort Falls Short
Review: The book has a gossipy tone, and it portrays Queen Elizabeth II in an extremely poor light. For example, the author makes a big deal over the flagpole at Buckingham Palace and the Queen's alleged initial refusal to fly the flag at half mast. That flagpole is for the Royal Standard. When the Queen is home, the Royal Standard (not the Union Jack) flies full. When the Queen is not home, the flagpole has nothing on it. Merely following that tradition is not a sign of disrespect, except in the minds of people who are not knowledgeable.
The book describes Diana and Mother Theresa as "two humanitarians." Give me a break. Mother Theresa did far more for the poor in a day than Diana did in her whole life. Shaking hands with an AIDS patient (as a lawyer meeting clients, I have done that lots of time) or spouting the liberal view on land mines does not qualify a person as "humanitarian." It is a genuine shame that Mother Theresa, after a lifetime of dedicated service to the poor, had the misfortune to die in the same week as Diana, and, as a result, be virtually ignored.
Rating:
Summary: Some new, some old.
Review: "No single event in history had ever been witnessed by so many people at one time. Across the globe, an audience of more than 2.5 billion watched the solemn progress of Diana's cortege through the silent streets of London and the funeral service at Westminster Abbey."
This aspect gives the book a little gravitas -- the sheer impact of her fame and her death's interplay with her influence worldwide. This book was a fast read (2 days). The real value of the book comes, I think, from Andersen's reportage of the details in the opening of the book of what happened in the hospital in Paris right after she died: how Prince Charles reacted to viewing her body, how no one could find any clothes to put on her (since her pants and top had been cut off her in the ambulance and Mohammad Al Fayed had had all of her things immediately removed from Dodi's Paris apartment) so in the coffin on the way back to England she wore a dress from the British Ambassador's wife's closet, how the hospital had taken privacy precautions against the press, etc. The second part of the book that is interesting here distinctly is the last section, which dissects the events leading up to the crash (the driver Henri Paul's drinking problem and psychological state), the explication of exactly how the crash happened, who came on the scene first, how Diana was treated at the scene, her injuries, what she may have said (according to Andersen, her last intelligible words were, "Oh, God, what's happened?"), and how a variety of interplaying factors led to the deaths of Paul, Fayed and Diana. For example, if she had been wearing her seatbelt, which she almost always did, she probably would have walked away from the accident, and how, ironically, of all the people who got in the car that night, she was probably best qualified to drive it. This section and the first seem to contain the real reportage of the book.
The middle section about her life appears to have a lot of recycled material in it, that if you've followed Diana stories and books, you've probably read this before (and to be fair, this may be just because I've read this six years after its publication). Morton's earlier Diana: Her True Story is quoted along with other somewhat accepted sources on the subject of her life. There are some tidbits, such as the assertion that Diana was set to star in a second Bodyguard movie with Kevin Costner, and that whilst Dodi was preparing to propose to her, no one who knew her well believed she would have accepted. While Andersen seems pretty objective in not portraying the princess as a saint, noting that she cut people out of her life when they said something to her she didn't want to hear, he does leave out of his book some well-traveled stories that paint her in a bad light (such as the comment she made to princes William and Harry's nanny post divorce that hinted that the nanny had had an abortion), or he glosses the negative trends in her life, living too much by (bad) instinct, her immaturity, etc.
I thought that this book was going to be more serious reportage on the accident. While it did contain that element, it was really a book about her life, with all the usual suspects included. Really, the stuff that's new here is about the day Diana died. The rest seems somewhat tired.
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