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Summary
Summary
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITOR'S CHOICE
A SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A VULTURE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
"A generous, appreciative biography of Robin Williams by a New York Times culture reporter. The author, who had access to Williams and members of the comedian's family, is an unabashed fan but doesn't shy away from the abundant messiness in his subject's personal life."-- The New York Times Book Review
From New York Times culture reporter Dave Itzkoff, the definitive biography of Robin Williams - a compelling portrait of one of America's most beloved and misunderstood entertainers.
From his rapid-fire stand-up comedy riffs to his breakout role in Mork & Mindy and his Academy Award-winning performance in Good Will Hunting , Robin Williams was a singularly innovative and beloved entertainer. He often came across as a man possessed, holding forth on culture and politics while mixing in personal revelations - all with mercurial, tongue-twisting intensity as he inhabited and shed one character after another with lightning speed.
But as Dave Itzkoff shows in this revelatory biography, Williams's comic brilliance masked a deep well of conflicting emotions and self-doubt, which he drew upon in his comedy and in celebrated films like Dead Poets Society ; Good Morning, Vietnam ; The Fisher King ; Aladdin ; and Mrs. Doubtfire , where he showcased his limitless gift for improvisation to bring to life a wide range of characters. And in Good Will Hunting he gave an intense and controlled performance that revealed the true range of his talent.
Itzkoff also shows how Williams struggled mightily with addiction and depression - topics he discussed openly while performing and during interviews - and with a debilitating condition at the end of his life that affected him in ways his fans never knew. Drawing on more than a hundred original interviews with family, friends, and colleagues, as well as extensive archival research, Robin is a fresh and original look at a man whose work touched so many lives.
Author Notes
David Itzkoff is an American journalist and writer. He graduated from Princeton University in 1998. His career includes working for Spin, Maxim, and Details magazines. His work has appeared in GQ, Vanity Fair, Wired, and other publications. Currently, he is a cultural reporter for the New York Times and is a lead contributor to their ArtsBeat blog. His first memoir was entitled Lads: A Memoir of Manhood (2004). His other books include Cocaine's Son: A Memoir (2011), Mad as Hell: The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man (2014), and Robin: The Definitive Biography of Robin Williams (2018).
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
According to this perceptive biography from Itzkoff (Mad as Hell), comedian Robin Williams was a man driven by a deep need for adulation and acceptance. Itzkoff introduces Williams as a brilliant, imaginative child left to his own devices in a sprawling mansion in the suburbs of Detroit, then describes his sometimes contentious relationship with his Ford executive father, his time in a community college drama department, his training at Juilliard (where he met lifelong friend Christopher Reeve), his breakthrough role on Mork and Mindy, and his long movie career. Along the way, readers meet the people who sustained him for much of his life, in particular the comic Billy Crystal, who perhaps knew him best, and his second wife, Marsha, who for years supervised much of his professional life. Nevertheless, Williams was consumed with misgivings about his stature as a star, a doubt that found expression in drug and alcohol abuse, and in his struggle to find film projects that could harness his manic talents. Itzkoff goes into detail on the debilitating illness (Lewy body dementia) that some of those close to Williams believe caused the comedian to commit suicide in 2014. Meticulously sourced and comprehensive in scope, Itzkoff's work gives Williams's many fans a rare glimpse of the man behind the celebrity. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Itzkoff, who knew the late Robin Williams on a personal level, gives us the biography we've been waiting for: a portrait of a brilliantly nimble-witted performer who spent most of his life battling a crippling lack of self-confidence and depression. Williams' suicide in 2014 took most of us by surprise, but here the author shows how Williams' seemingly inexplicable act was the end result of a lifetime of inner turmoil and an inability to find peace within his own mind. The book includes material drawn from previously published sources and interviews with a wide variety of people, including F. Murray Abraham, Norman Lear, David Letterman, Bruce Vilanch, Henry Winkler, and Terry Gilliam. The book has some nifty trivia (first choices to play Mork from Ork were John Byner and Dom DeLuise), but this isn't one of those skimming-the-surface Hollywood bios. It's a meaty, well-researched, moving story of a man who could never quite come to terms with his own brilliance.--Pitt, David Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
FLORIDA, by Lauren Groff. (Riverhead, $16.) Groff, the author of "Fates and Furies," is a master storyteller, and the 11 stories in her new collection dive into darker sides of the titular state: Panthers, tropical storms and sinkholes - not to mention plenty of bad men - abound. But it's not all grim: As our reviewer, Christine Schutt, put it, the selections "lean toward love and the promise of good people, in not just this state but the world." ROBIN, by Dave Itzkoff. (Picador, $18.) Itzkoff, a culture reporter for The Times, has written an appreciative and extensively reported biography of his hero Robin Williams. He follows Williams's development, from a wealthy, introverted teenager to a brilliant comic phenomenon, but doesn't skirt the comedian's personal struggles, including addiction and mental illness. WE BEGIN OUR ASCENT, by Joe Mungo Reed. (Simon & Schuster, $16.) A debut novel focuses on cycling, performance drugs and the personal failings of Sol, a middling British racer on the Tour de France. The book also includes a look at his marriage, to a geneticist waiting for a breakthrough. As Sol keeps doping, he and his wife are drawn into a drug-smuggling operation, raising questions about the moral consequences of ambition. INTO THE RAGING SEA: Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm, and the Sinking of El Faro, by Rachel Slade. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $17.99.) In 2015, the 790-foot ship El Faro sank off the Bahamas during Hurricane Joaquin, becoming the worst American maritime disaster in decades. Slade makes good use of the transcript captured by the voyage data recorder, offering heartbreaking insight into the ship's final hours. Our reviewer, Douglas Preston, called the book "a powerful and affecting story, beautifully handled." MY EX-LIFE, by Stephen McCauley. (Flatiron, $16.99.) When readers meet David Hedges, this novel's central character, it's not his happiest time: His boyfriend has left him, his job is unfulfilling and the house he rents (and loves) is being sold. But a phone call from his ex-wife, Julie, changes everything. Soon, he's heading to Boston to help her daughter sort out her life plans, and he and Julie become unlikely companions. RAGE BECOMES HER: The Power of Women's Anger, by Soraya Chemaly. (Atria, $17.) A longtime activist, Chemaly outlines a number of inequities that should outrage women (pay disparity, discrimination, harassment). Despite the socialization that women and girls receive to suppress their emotions, she makes a case for how anger can be a galvanizing force.
Kirkus Review
A New York Times culture reporter uses both straight reporting and insightful analysis in the first major biography of Robin Williams (1951-2014).After discovering his talents as a comedian and actor in his late teens, Williams was clearly going placesbut where? As Billy Crystal described one of Williams' early performances in the book, "it was like trying to catch a comet with a baseball glove." With his madcap stage antics, trademark rainbow suspenders, and rapid-fire shifting from character to character, he mesmerized audiences everywhere, first in the small comedy clubs of New York, then on TV, and eventually in Hollywood films. "But who was he?" So asks Itzkoff (Mad as Hell: The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies, 2014, etc.) in the prologue of this comprehensive examination of Williams' long career as an actor, family man, and friend. The author portrays an artist who, though not necessarily tormented, was driven by his insecurities and addictive personality to seek constant and immediate validation through his performances. From a stint at Juilliard, through his early success with Mork Mindy, and finally his big breaks with Good Morning, Vietnam, Dead Poets Society, and Aladdin, Itzkoff chronicles his career arc and friendships with the likes of Christopher Reeve, Billy Crystal, and Richard Pryor, among countless others. Through their perspectives, along with those of his parents, children, and wives, the author draws out the many different Robins the world has come to knowbut as the Itzkoff shows, there was so much more. His suicide came as a major blow to nearly everyone around him, and many are still puzzled by this final act from an artist who seemed to have it all. Itzkoff explores all the theories, including the surprising and probable one involving Lewy body disease, which caused crippling dementia and robbed Williams of his ability to perform.In this solidly reported and much-anticipated book, Itzkoff delivers a revealing portrait of the motivations of a quiet comic genius whose explosive persona moved millions. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
New York Times reporter Itzkoff delivers a detailed and revealing biography of comedian and actor Robin Williams. Born to a Ford Motor Company executive and his socialite wife, Williams grew up comfortably in Detroit and later San Francisco, where he discovered acting. He studied in New York at Juilliard and then went on to find fame at the age of 27 in the TV series Mork and Mindy. Films followed with a string of flops sprinkled with hits and four Oscar nominations. His meteoric career was matched by a tumultuous private life that included drugs and alcohol, infidelity, divorces, and health issues. His 2014 suicide came as a shock to the industry. The author goes into detail about Lewy body dementia, which may have factored in Williams's death. Extensive interviews with family and friends give this biography authenticity and offer an astute psychological analysis of the troubled actor and funnyman. Fred Berman narrates and captures many of the tics and manic delivery of his subject. VERDICT This well-written work will be a must-listen for Williams's fans and those who enjoy celebrity biographies. ["Williams's entertaining and mostly enjoyable life story will appeal to fans of...movies, entertainment, and stand-up comedy": LJ 5/15/18 starred review of the Holt hc.]-Phillip Oliver, formerly with Univ. of North Alabama, Florence © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Prologue | p. 1 |
| Part 1 Comet | |
| 1 Punky and Lord Posh | p. 7 |
| 2 The Escape Artist | p. 28 |
| 3 Legalized Insanity | p. 56 |
| 4 My Favorite Orkan | p. 84 |
| 5 The Robin Williams Show | p. 107 |
| 6 Mork Blows His Cork | p. 126 |
| 7 Bungalow 3 | p. 146 |
| Part 2 Star | |
| 8 Mr. Happy | p. 167 |
| 9 Tough Love | p. 187 |
| 10 Gooooooood Morning | p. 205 |
| 11 O Captain! | p. 224 |
| 12 Dreamlike Parts, with Phantasmagoric Associations | p. 244 |
| 13 Father Man | p. 264 |
| 14 Hot Flashes | p. 282 |
| Part 3 Supernova | |
| 15 The Golden Dude | p. 305 |
| 16 Fade to White | p. 325 |
| 17 Weapons of Self Destruction | p. 346 |
| 18 The Tiger in Winter | p. 365 |
| 19 Gone | p. 385 |
| 20 Everything Will Be Okay | p. 406 |
| 21 The Big Room | p. 423 |
| Epilogue | p. 437 |
| Robin Williams: Selected Works and Awards | p. 441 |
| Notes | p. 449 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 509 |
| Index | p. 513 |