Louise Brooks: A Biography

The long-awaited republication of this captivating account of the star's life.

Louise Brooks left Wichita, Kansas, for New York City at age fifteen and lived the kind of life of which legends are made. From her beginnings as a dancer to her years in Hollywood, Berlin, and beyond, she was hailed and reviled as a new type of woman: independent, intellectually daring, and sexually free. In this widely acclaimed, first and only comprehensive biography, Barry Paris traces Brooks's trajectory from her childhood through her fall into obscurity and subsequent "resurrection" as a brilliant writer and enduring film icon.

"Star biographies don't get any better than Barry Paris's Louise Brooks." USA Today

"This account has the aphrodisiac gloss of Brooks herself: you meet the stare of a modern icon, a picture that taunts your inability to touch the real thing. A necessary and stimulating book, it is itself an important part of Brooks's life after death." The New Republic

"Absorbing, wonderfully well researched and, all in all, an exemplar of its kind." London Spectator

"Louise Brooks is not simply a summary of her movie plots and love affairs but a serious work of film and social history." New York Magazine

Barry Paris is an award-winning biographer, film and music critic, and contributor to the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and other publications. He lives in Pittsburgh.

Translation Inquiries: Alfred A. Knopf