Rating: 
Summary: ZZZZZzzzzzzzz
Review: I love Mae West but this book bombed. It is informative but so much that it's boring. I never finished it. It has some great photos and if you're doing a term paper on her it's wonderful.
Rating:
Summary: ZZZZZzzzzzzzz
Review: I love Mae West but this book bombed. It is informative but so much that it's boring. I never finished it. It has some great photos and if you're doing a term paper on her it's wonderful.
Rating: 
Summary: good, not only for mae west fans, but a view into her times
Review: I read this book because I like Mae West, a woman who made a great deal of herself. When you read this book, you get more than you bargained for. The best of its kind that I have read, the author also details the times in which Mae lived which to me showed that she should be even more appreciated to have ascended to such heights against such odds. Not only a biography, but a history lesson. Almost two for the price of one.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing treatment of a famously satisfying subject.
Review: Now that frankness and celebrity clay-foot-probing are in fashion, a new generation of biographies (Kenneth Silverman's "Houdini! The Career of Erich Weiss"; Patrick McGilligan's "Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast"; Maria Riva's brilliant "Marlene Dietrich") has probed beneath urban legends and P.R. disinformation to find the fascinating human beasts beneath show business icons. A fabulous creature like Mae West rates this type of quality creative journalism, but gets nothing of the sort in Leider's book. A scrappy assemblage of secondary-source research and dull "setting the scene" padding, it does tell the bare-bones story of West's feisty career, but it's an awfully tough read. Leider clearly admires her subject, but doesn't have the words (or enough facts) to even begin to bring her to life.
Rating:
Summary: Barely scratches the surface..
Review: This book gives a sketchy account of her childhood and dwells on the characters she played rather than who she was. I would have preferred more insight to her personal life since that is what made Mae West so interesting.An easy book to put down.
Rating:
Summary: Barely scratches the surface..
Review: This book gives a sketchy account of her childhood and dwells on the characters she played rather than who she was. I would have preferred more insight to her personal life since that is what made Mae West so interesting. An easy book to put down.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the best of recent years
Review: This book is one of the most well researched of any Mae West bios in recent years. GREAT photos, and fascinating reading, it uncovers things even the most die-hard fans of Mae West wouldn't know! It delves into the phyche and influences that went into creating Mae West as we came to know her. A highly recommended book.
Rating:
Summary: Boring portrayal of an exciting woman
Review: Way too much attention to "social history" and "cultural commentary" and not enough information on Mae West. It was if the author felt she had to use every bit of historical background she had found - little of which served to move the book forward. I did not feel I got to know Mae West nearly as well as I did the times she was living in - which was not what I wanted from a Mae West biography.
Rating:
Summary: Boring portrayal of an exciting woman
Review: Way too much attention to "social history" and "cultural commentary" and not enough information on Mae West. It was if the author felt she had to use every bit of historical background she had found - little of which served to move the book forward. I did not feel I got to know Mae West nearly as well as I did the times she was living in - which was not what I wanted from a Mae West biography.
Rating:
Summary: Boring portrayal of an exciting woman
Review: Way too much attention to "social history" and "cultural commentary" and not enough information on Mae West. It was if the author felt she had to use every bit of historical background she had found - little of which served to move the book forward. I did not feel I got to know Mae West nearly as well as I did the times she was living in - which was not what I wanted from a Mae West biography.
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