Marilyn Monroe Norman Mailer

“This book is really two books. It is a biography, and it is also a pictorial retrospective of an actress whose greatest love affair was conceivably with the camera,” wrote Norman Mailer in his 1973 biography, Marilyn.

Now TASCHEN has paired Mailer’s original text with Bert Stern’s photographs from the legendary Last Sitting―widely considered the most intimate photographs of Monroe ever taken―to create a fitting tribute to the woman who, at the time of her death in 1962, was the world’s most famous, a symbol of glamour and eroticism for an entire generation. But though she was feted and adored by her public, her private life was that of a little girl lost, desperate to find love and security. Mailer’s Marilyn is beautiful, tragic, and complex. As Mailer reflects upon her life―from her bleak childhood through to the mysterious circumstances of her death―she emerges as a symbol of the bizarre decade during which she reigned as Hollywood’s greatest female star.