Steve McQueen
a biography
From the acclaimed bestselling biographer Marc Eliot comes a definitive look at the life of Steve McQueen---one of Hollywood's most iconic actors who was nicknamed "the King of Cool." Steve McQueen is one of America's legendary movie stars, also known for his turbulent life off-screen and his impeccable style. His physical beauty, his soft-spoken manner, his tough but tender roughness, and his aching vulnerability had women swooning and men wanting to be just like him. Today--nearly thirty years after he lost his battle against cancer at the age of fifty--McQueen remains "The King of Cool." Yet few know the truth of what bubbled beneath his composed exterior. Now, film historian Marc Eliot chronicles McQueen's tumultuous life, from his hardscrabble childhood to his rise to Hollywood superstar, to his struggles with alcohol and drugs and his fervor for racing fast cars and motorcycles, disclosing intimate details of his three marriages as well as his numerous affairs. Perhaps his greatest talent was to be able to convince audiences that he was who he really wasn't, even as he tried to prove to himself that he wasn't who he really was.--From publisher description.
Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.
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What the reading experience may hold
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Nonfiction
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Balanced tone · Steady pace
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
A good fit if…
Readers who want a thoughtful experience and enjoy noticing the connections beneath a book’s surface story.
This book's DNA
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Spoiler-Free Emotional Arc
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A quick reading snapshot
Edition facts and catalog signals to help you decide whether this book fits what you want to read next.
- ISBN-13
- 978-0-3074-5321-1
- Language
- English
- Edition record
- OL25185495M
A more thoughtful way into this book
This guide uses the edition details and category signals above to help you choose deliberately. It does not replace the author's work or a full review.
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
Begin with its place in Nonfiction, then notice where the book resists that label.
Read for connection, not completion.
Mark one passage that sharpens the book's central concern and one that complicates it. That tension often reveals more than a quick summary.
Three questions to carry with you
- Whose perspective organizes the story, and whose perspective remains outside it?
- Which sources or lived experiences carry the author’s central argument?
- How does the book change the way you understand its larger subject?
Editorial framework by Wesley Bryan, BookenDeX Founder and Editor.
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