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great pictures!	Customer Rating:
i love this book becasue it tells you everything about James dean and it has great pictures of him, in life and in his three movies!its a big book with everything james dean. it talks about his childhood, film life, and his life in general. i love this book

Great pictures, but dubious biography

Customer Rating:

The artwork of this huge tome is great and features many photos and documents from the familiy's archive. Having said that the text written by George Perry remains questionable. He seems to be a good writer and shares a lot of details and thoughts about Dean which make the biography lively, but one cannot overlook that he was obviously under pressure concerning certain aspects of Dean's live. First of all, Winton Dean's decision to not keep his son is called "brave" and Winton is throughout the book shown in a very positive way. Second of all every acquaintance with a woman is exaggerated into a (sexual) affair, while the men in his live are completely ignored (even Billy Bast gets hardly mentioned) and at the end Perry categorically denies that Dean was anything but heterosexual. And he didn't suffer from a mood disorder or death wishes, too, Perry says. This is not a real biography, but just a marketing ploy designed to attract die hard fans who for example cannot deal with bi- or homosexuality. (If you can ignore that, Perry still makes some thoughtful remarks for example about Dean's loneliness and how it gave him strength.) So my advise is to get this book cheap or second-hand, because it is clearly overhyped. Billy Bast's recent book for example is definitely a better buy.

Two stars, for illustrations only

Customer Rating:

The deliberate distortion of history, either to make it more entertaining and therefore profitable, or to conform to some agenda and make it more "acceptable", can be something as blatant as perhaps a work by Frey, or as subtle as George Perry's "James Dean". It was perhaps his wish to conform to the desires of the James Dean Estate, from whom he apparently had full cooperation, that has led Perry, a smart and respected writer, to present what amounts pretty much to a garbled rehash of an old Warner Brothers publicity handout on the James Dean Myth: saga of the hot-blooded (read here heterosexual but "experimental") American rebel hero who climbed from rags to riches by dint of nothing but his own talent and hard work. Nowhere is there a hint of the devious means used by the talented but undoubtedly wily Dean to achieve this success. This of course is something that may fill the hearts of more undiscriminating Dean fans with joy, but from a historical point of view is misleading if not deceptive. With little or no evidence to support him, Perry also elevates any female friendship Dean may have had to the level of a sexual relationship, if not love affair, which, had he read the books he lists in his bibliography, he would have known to be demonstrably untrue. Christine White, case in point. On the other hand, Perry is careful to conceal the liaisons that the bisexual Dean had with males, something again documented by the other biographers that he lists. Perry's scrappy writing leaves the reader with the impression that Dean spent most of his time in New York living with dancer Elizabeth Sheridan. In actual fact, when Dean was not living with his mentor/lover Rogers Brackett, he was mostly living at the Iroqois Hotel either by himself, or with his friend William Bast, or in the apartments of other male friends. His time spent with Sheridan was miniscule by comparison. I doubt that this kind of historical "gerrymandering" happens by accident. Maybe it does, but unfortunately the botching is only made more egregious by the fact that the misleading text is surrounded by extensive photographic illustration provided by the Dean Estate, which lends it an air of verisimilitude, and will undoubtedly ensure its enshrinement in libraries. The book's cover bills itself as "the ultimate portrait of the ultimate screen icon" and boasts that it "features photographs from the Dean family's private collection". Those two phrases alone should I suppose alert the prospective reader that what is being presented may not exactly be as close to a true biography as he or she may wish.

James Dean	Customer Rating:
book was sent as a gift & was recieved as a great book about James Dean

The Best Chronicle on James Dean

Customer Rating:

I have read many James Dean books, and the biographies have ranged from bland to overly philosophical to just obscene. George Perry's book has a lot of basic information given in a clean and clear format. Perry does give some more insight into Dean's life in unknown times. Perry's book should be taken as an official bio. It doesn't look at Dean's life in a sleazy way, but it does tackle questions about Dean's lifestyle in a fair & balanced method. The photos and layout are nice. There are extra informationa nd fact boxes relating to the chapter's material. There isn't enough material to make this book excellent, but it is the best book on James Dean available. If there is one book you must read on Hollywood's classic rebel, let this one be it.