Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #772021 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Synopsis
An illustrated celebration of La Streisand's life and career, brimming with anecdotes, quotes, and little-known facts. This illumination of Streisand as both artist and celebrity takes a uniquely light-hearted and at times irreverant approach to the legendary star. With an eye to collectors, lost film footage and never-released songs are reviewed, and the book is illustrated throughout with hundreds of color and black-and-white photos - some never before published - along with record sleeves, sheet music covers, and poster reproductions. This is a dream of a book for Streisand fans and culture vultures everywhere.

Customer Reviews

Very impressive and a good (long) read
For the avid Barbra fan, this book is a frontrunner. Allison J. Waldman admits in the introduction that it is impossible for anyone except the diva herself to really understand her, and so this book reads between the lines to find motives for Barbra Streisand’s actions, with this in mind the book succeeds. The author tries to portray Barbra as a completely well rounded character; there is a section, for example on what other celebrities have said about the star and what she says about herself. The book is NOT A BIOGRAPHY, it doesn’t go into detail of her life before fame, but looks deeper into the films and music and even the live concerts of Barbra. This is how the book differs from regular biographies. It begins with an A-Z list of people and events in Barbra’s life that may crop up later in the book, it later states the films and music events that never came to pass, but were meant to and then has a “Top Ten Myths About Barbra” section, rather like the truth alert page on www.barbrastreisand.com. There is a quiz in the back which is actually quite testing for any fan and finally a section about her recent “Timeless” concerts, marriage to James Brolin and her newer albums, this continues to be just as detailed. In total there are 18 sections spread out over a massive 286 pages, each page is littered with pictures, mostly in black and white and most of these are rare photographs from backstage. The only problems I would have is when the book says “revised and updated”, it really has only added an extra section to the very end. When tallies and album success charts are made earlier in the book, the newer records aren’t even mentioned. Pictures from her childhood or details about that era aren’t really discussed at all; it focuses mainly on her career.
It is quite heavy reading as there is so much information, so compared to other books I have read on Barbra Streisand this one is pretty good. To decide whether it’s the book for you, you’d have to remind yourself of what you really want from a book, if it’s pictures and career information – you’ve found it!