Also of interest...in celebrity biographies

David Bowie: Starman

by Paul Trynka

(Little Brown, $26)

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Pinning down rock’s quintessential chameleon is no easy task, said Christopher Bray in The New Republic. “One day Bowie is a curly-tressed hippie in paisleys and silks, the next a crop-headed proto-punk in denim and leather.” Paul Trynka’s thesis, that “Bowie is a far more conventional and conservative chap than all that satin and tat suggest,” is backed by evidence. Still, that theory “doesn’t begin to account” for the subversive power of Bowie’s career-long exercise in self-negation.

Jane Fonda

by Patricia Bosworth

(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $30)

Love her or hate her, Jane Fonda has exhibited an “uncanny ability to slip into era-defining guises as if they were custom couture,” said Susan Wloszczyna in USA Today. This “decade-in-the-making” biography follows all of the actress’s permutations—from sex kitten to Oscar winner, from anti-war activist to trophy wife. Because the star cooperated with the author, the book is full of revelations, and it “does a bang-up job” of deconstructing Fonda’s defining relationship with her father.

Just One Catch

by Tracy Daugherty

(St. Martin’s, $35)

“Few authors ever make a cultural impact as lasting as Joseph Heller did with Catch-22,” said Carolyn Kellogg in the Los Angeles Times. As Tracy Daugherty writes, Heller’s war satire was as powerful a first novel as they come, though it overshadowed the rest of Heller’s life and work, notably his second novel, Something Happened. Daugherty’s plain-facts approach to Heller’s life lacks “artistry and insight,” but his book is the first biography of Heller, and it’s “a decent starting point.”

Wendy and the Lost Boys

by Julie Salamon

(Penguin, $30)

“Everyone knew Wendy Wasserstein—or so they thought,” said Melissa Maerz in Entertainment Weekly. The Pulitzer–winning playwright, who gave voice to the struggles of a generation of women, “filled her work with intimate details about herself.” Yet when it came to certain private struggles—like her battle with lymphoma—Wasserstein was guarded. This “fascinating” biography “lays bare” Wasserstein’s secret inner life. “Like the playwright’s best work,” it’s “bound to cause a small scandal.”