Madonna Book:

		List Price: $26.95		Publisher: Simon & Schuster Salesrank: 606130
		Our Price: $14.61
		Used Price: $14.61
		Media: Paperback

Editorial Review:

In Madonna: An Intimate Biography, author J. Randy Taraborrelli's scrupulously researched and completely balanced unauthorized biography of one of the world's most celebrated entertainers, the reader is allowed to draw his or her own conclusions. Indeed, the portrait bestselling author Taraborrelli paints here is of a truly complex woman, one who is driven and determined to succeed at any cost, yet who displays remarkable vulnerability when it comes to matters of the heart.

It is significant that Madonna: An Intimate Biography is the first such book written about the star in over a decade, because in the past ten years the ever-changing Madonna has gone through her biggest transformation yet -- from tempestuous sex goddess to happily married mother. Amazingly, as she launches her first worldwide tour in eight years, she is now -- at forty-something -- enjoying one of the most successful periods of her groundbreaking career.

Whereas other books about Madonna have been based on previously published material, Madonna: An Intimate Biography is the result of ten years of exclusive interviews with people who are speaking publicly about her for the first time, including close friends, business associates and even family members. Since Taraborrelli interviewed the star herself early in her career, he is now able to draw from such firsthand experiences to place her success story in perspective and provide new, stunning insights. The true Madonna, as presented here, is not merely a sensation-seeking tabloid vixen, but a flesh-and-blood woman with human foibles and weaknesses -- as well as great strengths and ambitions.

For the first time, the reader learns about the complex nature of her difficult relationship with her father, and how the two finally found one another after years of estrangement; how Warren Beatty broke her heart, and why the two never wed; how she and John Kennedy, Jr., became romantically involved, his mother's reaction to the prospect of Madonna as a daughter-in-law and why it could never have worked out; the truth of her relationships with the fathers of her two children and how, as a loving and attentive mother, she has evolved into a surprisingly different woman...and what the future holds for her.

Madonna: An Intimate Biography is a truly explosive and definitive account of the life of an entertainer who is undoubtedly one of the most popular, trendsetting figures of our time. Full of amazing disclosures about her private life and public career, New York Times bestselling author J. Randy Taraborrelli's latest work reveals Madonna in a new -- and surprisingly inspiring -- way. Not only a feast for fans, this book is great entertainment for anyone who enjoys a remarkable story, stirringly told.

Description of Madonna: An Intimate Biography:
What's the best part of Madonna: An Intimate Biography? The sex part! According to author J. Randy Taraborrelli, Madonna tried to insure her breasts for $6 million each. Prince dumped her because "he wanted to savor every second [of sex]; she was into multiple orgasms." Sean Penn demanded she get an HIV test. "Screw you," she said. "Not until you get tested," he said. When Penn found out about Madonna and Prince, he punched a hole in her wall. Madonna demanded that Prince plaster it ("You're responsible!"), and he did. JFK Jr. refused to give her a baby, and Jackie objected to his affair with someone called a "Material Girl." "Who in this world has been more materialistic than you?" JFK Jr. asked his mother. When he and Madonna dumped each other, he said, "Easy come, easy go." She compared her Broadway debut in Speed-the-Plow to "having really good sex." After their first kiss, Warren Beatty said, "Houston, we have lift-off." Madonna's tune "Hanky Panky" reflects Beatty's favorite sport, spanking. But Barbra Streisand helped convince him to dump the "floozy," so she picked up Tony Ward on Malibu Beach by putting out a cigarette on his back and pinching his nipple. When she realized he was more of a floozy than she was, she spent 21 and a half hours in the Carlyle Hotel trying to convince the married Penn to father her child. Rebuffed, she picked up Carlos Leon, a fitness trainer at Crunch, in Central Park, and presto, she had a baby. Dennis Rodman (whom she called "Daddy Long Legs") was a dud in bed, but she found true love in the daddy of her second child, Princess Diana's cousin Guy Ritchie, director of Snatch.

There's stuff about her career in the book, but Taraborrelli is a lousy music and film critic. I can't vouch for the accuracy of his dish, but I promise you that as a gossip he's the real thing. --Tim Appelo

Madonna: An Intimate Biography Reviews:
A peek into a very fascinating life
2009-08-18 - What I love about Randy's books is that he gives you the sources, as best he can, from where he gets his info. So while this might not be 100% true, it is about as well documented as it gets.

In this book we are carried through Madonna's life from birth to the wedding with Guy Richie. We are shown that above talent---it was her marketing genius, charisma and determination--and willingness to work her behind off--that made her one of the world's richest and most famous women. She is also one of the genetic lucky ones that can get by on 3 hours of sleep per night, which definitely gives one the edge in whatever they do!

Vicariously, we get to enter her world of dating rich and famous men like Sean Penn and JFK Jr. as well as nonrich and nonfamous men such as Carlos Leon, who left her because he couldn't stand to be with someone who went to bed at 2 AM and got up at 5 AM to read the world's newspapers and see what they wrote about her (and let anything bad written spoil her whole day!)

Very interesting stories, anecdotes, and gossip in this book! It makes a great escape.

Revealing Portrait of Pop's Biggest Diva
2009-05-13 - "Madonna: An Intimate Biography", written by renowned unauthorized biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli, is a look at the life and times of mega-star Madonna. The book follows her from her birth in Detroit on August 16, 1958 to the birth of her second son Rocco and her Drowned World Tour in 2001. Eight years later, Madonna has still remained in the spotlight and been involved in several projects, but none of them have been as exciting or innovative as her glory days. So this book, while a little dated, ends on a high note, as it should for such a riveting public figure.

As I mentioned in my title, Madonna is probably the biggest diva in pop music, and I mean that in both the negative and positive sense. Her talent, showmanship, and drive are legendary, but so are her petulant and narcissistic tendencies. This book reveals it all. Some reviewers have complained that "everything in this book I've heard before". Well, Madonna is one of the most talked about women in entertainment history. Of course most fans and even non-fans know the basics of her life story. But that doesn't make it less interesting. Especially the way Taraborrelli goes into detail and uses close sources to give firsthand accounts of events in Madonna's life. The accuracy of some of these sources are debatable, especially when you consider how many toes Madonna has stepped in her quest for stardom. But, we'll never know the completely true story unless we were there, so who cares anyway?

I give the book great credit for portraying its subject in a totally balanced, objective, and complex light. The author doesn't ignore Madonna's character flaws, but he also doesn't undermine her strengths either. Reading this gives you a better sense of who the real Madonna is more than the promising but poorly written "Life with my Sister Madonna" by her brother Christopher Ciccone or "Madonna: Like An Icon" and "Madonna: A Biography" by Lucy O'Brien and Mary Cross, respectively. The latter books served as mere career diaries and the former was like a long-winded diary entry. In this book, however, we see the personal transformations Madonna experiences in her lifetime. We see how she did whatever she could to make it in her pre-stardom days in New York, how turbulent her marriage was to Sean Penn and how vulnerable it made her, how fulfilling and life changing having her first child was, and every dramatic moment in between. The author acknowledges in the introduction to his book that its hard to know the real Madonna beneath all the glamour and image morphing, but if you look closer, she's been in front of us all along. This book helps us do just that. Look closer.

Madonna - We Hardly Knew You
2006-04-05 - What a price the material girl paid!

This is a must for any Madonna fan collection. Many former tween wanna-bes of the 1980's are now in their late 20's and early 30's ... and owe a lot of their own ambition to Madonna Veronica Louise Ciccone, native of Bay City Michigan, who at 17 ran off to New York with $50 not knowing a soul. She is a mixture of strength of mind and vulnerability of heart. She is an icon whose humanity has been assessed over and over again by tabloids. She has had a fire in the belly since she was a Bay City teenager which found sustenance after she took on the world. Now a British Lady with a house in the country, Madonna has come a long long way from the Motown roots in Michigan to New York City in the 80's to London and her 2005 release of Confessions on a Dance Floor.

At 17, a New York cab driver dropped her off at the center of everything - Times Square - and circa 2006 before her next World Tour .... Madonna's image is everywhere in H&M ad near the very spot her teenage self was dropped off at. She is still on her throne while her contemporaries from the 1980's are sometimes, nowhere to be found. Madonna is the ultimate testament of: YOU GO GIRL!


very interesting
2003-12-30 - This book is very thick, but its an easy read all the way. I know this book can't all be true, but it sure feels like it. Very well done.

A Fun Read
2003-09-27 - Madonna is one of the most successful artists in the history of pop music. A key to her success was her single-minded determination to become a star no matter what it took. Along the way she used a lot of people and bruised a lot of egos. Not surprisingly, many of those whom she stepped on were very willing to talk to Taraborrelli, a modern day Kitty Kelly whose biographies/victims include Diana Ross (the delightfully nasty Call Her Miss Ross) and Michael Jackson (The Magic And The Madness). This makes for quite a fun read.

Taraborelli does a good job of detailing Madonna's turbulent childhood (the loss of her mother, her strained relationship with her father, even the loss of her virginity!?!) but the book really takes off when Madonna goes to New York in 1978 in search of stardom. We are introduced to Camille Barbone, a talent agent who is the unsung heroine in the Madonna story. Camille invests every cent she has into Madonna's career only to be dumped by the Material Girl when she finally secures a recording deal with Warner Brothers. Early on, we also see Madonna go through a series of male musical collaborators who double as lovers, ensuring their professional devotion to her until she moves on to bigger and better things (among them Jellybean "Holiday" Benitez).

As Madonna's career takes off, the men she chooses to date are inevitably celebs themselves. The book is most entertaining in dealing with her many relationships, including hothead first husband Sean Penn, wishy washy JFK Jr. (who dumps Madonna on Mommy's orders), old fart Warren Beatty (as much a user as Madonna), and superfreak Dennis Rodman, who kissed and told about his relationship with Madonna in his own tell-all book (a big no-no in Madonna's world).

Where the book falls short (and is kept from meriting five stars) is in its frequently contradictory assessments of Madonna's music. After raving about the contents of Madonna's third album TRUE BLUE (and its five major hits), for instance, he sums it up by saying it "wasn't a great album. A less intriguing artist might not have survived it." Even though Taraborrelli wrote for music magazines early in his career, he is not a strong analyzer of pop music.

This book ends in mid-2001, at a time in Madonna's life when her personal and professional life were seemingly at her peak (the birth of her son Rocco and marriage to Guy Ritchie, the release of her two strongest albums RAY OF LIGHT and MUSIC had all occured within the previous two years). As her wedding unfolds on the final pages, we are introduced to a kinder, gentler Madonna who has reconciled with her father and seems to finally appreciate the little things in life. For Madonna fans, it was a great time to end the book (since then, her professional life at least has not been so successful, with the universal panning of her film Swept Away - which Ritchie directed - and the subpar AMERICAN LIFE album). For all of the entertainment this amazing woman has provided, she deserves a happy ending.