Marilyn Monroe died on 5th August, 1962. Since then, the appetite for information about Monroe has proved insatiable. Lois Banner's new biography is revelatory. Banner had access to material no one else has seen, from a trove of personal papers to facts and anecdotes about her childhood and her death. Banner traces the eleven foster homes Marilyn went to, uncovering the sexual abuse she suffered and her bisexuality. She is also the first biographer to read Monroe's psychiatric records, revealing a woman deeply rooted in paradox. No biographer before has attempted to analyse — much less realise — most of these aspects of her personality. Lois Banner has.

Last year J. Randy Taraborrelli wrote a bestselling book entitled The Secret Life of Marilyn. His is the most recent of dozens written since Marilyn's death in August of 1962 and yet the appetite for information about Marilyn is insatiable. No matter whether sensational or flawed, as most of these biographies have been, the fans always come out, in best-selling numbers. This time, with Lois Banner's Revelations, Marilyn's fans won't be disappointed. This is no re-tread of recycled material. As one of the founders of the field of women's history, Lois Banner reveals Marilyn Monroe in the way that only a top-notch historian and biographer could. Banner appreciates the complexities of Monroe's personal life in the context of her achievements as an actor, singer, dancer, comedian, model and courtesan. And the new information she unearths is revelatory. Banner's credentials opened doors and she has access to material no one else has seen, from the so called Rosetta stones of Monroe research (two large file cabinets filled with a trove of personal papers), to an interview with a member of the Kennedy secret service detail who shared what he witnessed for the first time, to facts and anecdotes about her childhood and her death and every stage of her life in between that were either missed or ignored or misinterpreted. Like her art, Marilyn's self was rooted in paradox: she was a powerful star and a child-like waif, a joyful, irreverent party girl with a deeply spiritual side; a superb friend and a narcisist; a dumb blonde and an intellectual. No biographer before has attempted to analyze — much less realized — most of these aspects of her personality. Lois Banner has.

Marilyn Monroe is the most famous, ubiquitous, and idolized woman of our modern age. An icon of physical beauty, sexuality, and the quintessentially American dream, Marilyn's legend continues to grow four decades after her death. MM: Personal is a new and illuminating look behind the veil of that legend, reproducing artifacts and documents — thought to have been lost since 1962 and never before revealed to the public — to clarify, qualify, or reverse many common conceptions about the blond bombshell. A Selected from more than 10,000 largely unseen and heretofore unpublished items that were stored in Marilyn's two personal file cabinets — the Rosetta Stones of Marilyn Monroe scholarship — the collection also draws from the important collections of Greg Schreiner and Scott Fortner. These documents, snapshots, letters, memorabilia, and ephemera are joined by the first account of Monroe's life since Gloria Steinem's Marilyn to be written by a feminist historian, bringing a depth of understanding previously unavailable to her life. New answers come to light, such as what the dimensions were of Marilyn's personal management of her public persona, Marilyn's relationship to the photographers with whom she worked, how sensitive she was to her fans, and the tenor of her marriages to Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller. MM: Personal promises to completely refocus how we view Marilyn's private life, personal relationships, and legacy.