Last Girl Before Freeway: The Life, Loves, Losses, and Liberation of Joan Rivers
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Leslie Bennetts. (2016). Last Girl Before Freeway: The Life, Loves, Losses, and Liberation of Joan Rivers. Little, Brown and Company.

Leslie Bennetts. 2016. Last Girl Before Freeway: The Life, Loves, Losses, and Liberation of Joan Rivers. Little, Brown and Company.

Leslie Bennetts, Last Girl Before Freeway: The Life, Loves, Losses, and Liberation of Joan Rivers. Little, Brown and Company, 2016.

Leslie Bennetts. Last Girl Before Freeway: The Life, Loves, Losses, and Liberation of Joan Rivers. Little, Brown and Company, 2016.

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Last Girl Before Freeway

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The Life, Loves, Losses, and Liberation of Joan Rivers

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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Bennetts, Leslie
   • bioText: Leslie Bennetts is the author of the national bestseller The Feminine Mistake as well as a longtime Vanity Fair writer and former New York Times reporter. At Vanity Fair she wrote many movie star cover stories in addition to articles on subjects ranging from priest pedophilia to U.S. antiterrorism policy, and she was the first woman ever to cover a presidential campaign at the New York Times. Bennetts has also written for many other magazines, including New York, Vogue, More, The Nation, and Glamour.
   • name: Leslie Bennetts

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title

Last Girl Before Freeway

fullDescription

Named one of "40 Gifts for the Book Lover on Your List," by Good Housekeeping: The definitive book about Joan Rivers' tumultuous, victorious, tragic, hilarious, and fascinating life.
Joan Rivers was more than a legendary comedian; she was an icon and a role model to millions, a fearless pioneer who left a legacy of expanded opportunity when she died in 2014. Her life was a dramatic roller coaster of triumphant highs and devastating lows: the suicide of her husband, her feud with Johnny Carson, her estrangement from her daughter, her many plastic surgeries, her ferocious ambition and her massive insecurities.
But Rivers' career was also hugely significant in American cultural history, breaking down barriers for her gender and pushing the boundaries of truth-telling for women in public life. A juicy, intimate biography of one of the greatest comedians ever — a performer whose sixty year career was borne, simply, out of a desire to make people laugh so she could feel loved — Last Girl Before Freeway delves into the inner workings of a woman who both reflected and redefined the world around her.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Jocelyn McClurg, USA Today
   • content: Highly readable.... Bennetts' clear-eyed biography shows why this ambitious, 'stubbornly paradoxical' woman who 'wasn't ready to cede the spotlight' continues to command our attention. (3 out of 4 stars)
2. • premium: False
   • source: Gloria Steinem
   • content: You may think you know Joan Rivers, but I'll bet you'll be shocked by the revelations in Leslie Bennetts's irresistible biography. Before there was a women's movement or much hope for a woman in stand-up comedy, Joan made it by ridiculing everything she craved, from beauty and respectability to fashion and power. With unmatched energy and an ambition that made Napoleon look like Gandhi, she broke the boundaries of taste and commonsense-and widened the path for us all.
3. • premium: False
   • source: Larry King, television and radio host
   • content: Joan was a great friend of mine and this is one hell of a book. A terrific read from start to finish, it captures Joan completely. Five stars.
4. • premium: False
   • source: Tina Brown, author of The Diana Chronicles
   • content: The story of Joan Rivers is also the story of the trials and tribulations faced by talented and ambitious American women for decades, and Leslie Bennetts tells her story in riveting, surprising, heart rending, and hilarious detail.
5. • premium: False
   • source: Betsy Lerner, author of The Bridge Ladies
   • content: Leslie Bennetts has delivered a big, juicy biography of comedy's First Lady that takes the reader behind the scenes in the male dominated entertainment industry. That would be fascinating enough, but what stays is a portrait of a woman whose drive is fueled almost entirely on self-loathing. We know by now that most comics are in great pain-this account understands the high cost of all of those outrageous over-the-top screamingly funny classic Joan Rivers zingers.
6. • premium: False
   • source: O, the Oprah Magazine
   • content: [An] affectionate and entertaining bio.
7. • premium: False
   • source: Rosellen Brewer, Library Journal
   • content: In this first detailed biography of Rivers since her death, Bennetts reveals the woman behind the schtick. It's all here.... Celebrity mavens and fans of well-written biographies will enjoy this title.
8. • premium: False
   • source: Entertainment Weekly
   • content: [A] fascinating biography.
9. • premium: False
   • source: Ilene Cooper, Kirkus Reviews
   • content: Undeniably dishy.... A fat and full book that will satisfy fans who want all of Joan in one place.
10. • premium: False
    • source: Jonah Raskins, NY Journal of Books
    • content: Thoroughly researched and eminently readable.... Last Girl Before Freeway is likely to be, for our time, the definitive biography of [Rivers].
11. • premium: False
    • source: Tom Beer, Newsday
    • content: A sympathetic portrait of the scathingly funny and ambitious comedian.
12. • premium: False
    • source: Jonah Raskin, New York Journal of Books
    • content: Thoroughly researched and eminently readable.
13. • premium: False
    • source: Sara Eckel, Washington Post
    • content: [A] frank and compelling biography.... A clear-eyed exploration of Rivers's historical and cultural significance.... Bennetts offers an important work that lifts her much-dismissed subject to her proper place in history. You can love Joan. You can hate Joan. But Last Girl Before Freeway won't let you deny her significance.
14. • premium: False
    • source: Julia Felsenthal, Vogue
    • content: Read it either as a very diverting distraction from the maelstrom of politics, or as an instruction manual for how to get off your ass, kick despair to the curb, and make lemonade out of the most sour of lemons.
15. • premium: False
    • source: Boris Kachka, New York Magazine
    • content: In this hard-digging biography, Leslie Bennetts uncovers the scars and warts, the tall tales and the true, giving Rivers exactly the memorial she deserves.
16. • premium: False
    • source: Tina Jordan, Entertainment Weekly
    • content: Bennetts is a skilled reporter and writer, and she pieces together primary and secondary reporting with extraordinary skill as she unspools Rivers' life and career...I came away from Last Girl Before Freeway with a new appreciation for (Rivers) both as a groundbreaking cultural icon and formidable businesswoman. (A-)
17. • premium: False
    • source: Lisa Levy, New Republic
    • content: The arrival of the first major biography of Rivers.
18. • premium: False
    • source: Publishers Weekly (starred review)
    • content: Bennetts's reporting gives readers unparalleled access to her subject, which comedy fans, and those just fascinated by superstardom, will greatly enjoy.
19. • premium: False
    • source: Steph Opitz, Marie Claire
    • content: There's a lot to discuss when it comes to the polarizing Rivers...and Bennetts covers it all with aplomb. No matter how you feel about Rivers, reading this book will give you a better understanding of a woman who fought for space in a male-owned industry. Oh, and you'll laugh, too.
20. • premium: False
    • source: Riley Cardoza, Good Housekeeping
    • content: A dishy, thorough biography.
21. • premium: False
    • source: Sherryl Connelly, New York Daily News
    • content: Examines the polarizing Rivers' life in almost forensic detail. It's an impressive, and telling, account.
22. • premium: False
    • source: Daphne Merkin, Departures
    • content: A welcome investigation into the circumstances that shaped this influential, raspy voiced comedienne.
23. • premium: False
    • source: Star
    • content: Fascinating.
24. • premium: False
    • source: Nicki Gostin, Fox News
    • content: A juicy, intimate biography of a performer whose career spanned 60...
25. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      Starred review from September 12, 2016
      This comprehensive biography painstakingly charts the late Joan Rivers’s journey from growing up in Westchester, N.Y., feeling not at all pretty (the title of the book refers to a joke about how her mother hoped to pawn her off on a man, any man, who passed through town) to succeeding in comedy and becoming a veritable polymath of the business and entertainment worlds. Through interviews with family, staff, and comedy insiders, Vanity Fair contributing editor Bennetts (The Feminine Mistake) draws a portrait of the groundbreaking comedienne that is both deep and sweeping. She fact-checks Rivers on her own anecdotes, noting, for example, that she probably never met Marilyn Monroe, despite titling one of her books after a supposed conversation in which the actress told Rivers, “Men are stupid... and they like big tits.” Sometimes the portrait turns unsavory. Laughter gave Rivers power, which she was not afraid to wield against other women whom she saw as her rivals. She was the first to ask stars on the red carpet “Who are you wearing?”, a line of questioning resisted today by feminists for its lack of substance. Scared of losing it all, she stockpiled fancy china and Manolo Blahnik shoes. But Bennetts isn’t overly critical of Rivers, focusing also on her good deeds for “the little people”—like sending a badge from her TV show Fashion Police to a young fan—and her drive to succeed in a comedy world dominated by men. Bennetts’s reporting gives readers unparalleled access to her subject, which comedy fans, and those just fascinated by superstardom, will greatly enjoy.

26. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      October 15, 2016
      The life and legacy of Joan Rivers (1933-2014).Rivers grew up in a state of constant contradiction. Her mother's desire to have the nicest things put the family in perpetual financial struggle, and Rivers wanted to become a famous actress but struggled with her "plain" appearance. She desperately wanted people to find her funny, but for the longest time, no one did. But as she wrote later in life, "I knew instinctively that my unyielding drive was my most important asset." Many consider Rivers' style of humor to be unnecessarily mean, but her in-your-face approach was courageous at a time when female comics "couldn't even make a bodily reference." Rivers eventually became a household name, finding success as a late-night guest host with Johnny Carson and then later through E! and QVC. But there was so much failure first, and former Vanity Fair writer Bennetts (The Feminine Mistake, 2008) seemingly includes it all. "After years of being pampered, I am still angry. I am angry because of the Show Bar," Rivers said, referring to the humiliating gigs of her early career. Since she would do anything to succeed, she hated people (especially young, beautiful people) who did not work hard to keep up their appearances. She never thought she was mean because she believed the targets of her jokes could take it, and she was always equally critical, if not more so, of herself. Rivers just "didn't understand weakness." Bennetts portrays her subject as a woman much more complex than her outwardly abrasive personality might suggest, and while some sections fly by, others are so weighed down by the particulars, like the reasons behind Rivers leaving the Tonight Show, that the book is at risk of losing the vibrancy readers will no doubt expect, given its subject. A thorough, sweeping look at the woman who pioneered the idea that "outrageousness can be cleansing and healthy" and the turbulent personality that brought it to life.

      COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

27. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      September 15, 2016
      The late comedienne Joan Rivers was known for oversharing when it came to her life. And that is perhaps the problem with this undeniably dishy book. Those who've followed Rivers' career have heard most of it before. This is especially true in the book's early chapters when Bennetts (The Feminine Mistake, 2007) quotes Rivers' first autobiography, Enter Talking (1986), so often, readers could be forgiven for wondering why they just don't pick up that book. Her source circle does widen as the book goes on, with many business associates and friends like Blair Trump, though not relatives, quoted. The book's major point, that Rivers' physical and financial insecurities, dating back to childhood, shaped, well, everything about her life, is repeated throughout, but more interesting are the contradictions in the comedienne's life Bennetts highlights: her dedication to the gay community, especially through charity, while voting Republican; her desire to be taken care of by men, even as she was making millions. A fat and full book that will satisfy fans who want all of Joan in one place.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

28. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      September 1, 2016
      

      Even though comedian Joan Rivers was 81 when she died, she had no intention of retiring. Of course, she didn't plan on dying anytime soon either. Rivers performed a sold-out show the night before a botched endoscopy ended her life. In addition to being a legendary comedian whose career spanned 60 years, Rivers was a feminist pioneer in the male-dominated world of stand-up with her conspiratorial humor and everyday looks. Not being physically beautiful both haunted and drove her. "If I had to choose between being funny and beautiful--beautiful." In this first detailed biography of Rivers since her death, Bennetts (The Feminine Mistake) reveals the woman behind the schtick. It's all here--growing up in middle-class Larchmont, NY, with a mother who wanted her to give up comedy and get married, her big break on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show and their subsequent feud, the suicide of her husband--all of that compelled Rivers to work, work, work. She decided that if she couldn't be loved because she was pretty, she'd be loved because she was funny. VERDICT Celebrity mavens and fans of well-written biographies will enjoy this title. [See Prepub Alert, 5/23/16.]--Rosellen Brewer, Sno-Isle Libs., Marysville, WA

      Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

29. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      June 15, 2016
      

      A veteran journalist whose Vanity Fair profiles range from Sir Anthony Hopkins to Demi Moore, Bennetts offers a portrait of iconic comedian Joan Rivers, telling her personal story while assessing her huge cultural impact. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

      Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

30. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      February 27, 2017
      Bennett does her best with this biography of Joan Rivers, the comedian who is credited with forcing open late-night TV and stand-up comedy clubs to women. Bennett tries to liven up the prose by imitating Rivers’s style and delivery when quoting her brash onstage humor and recounting numerous offstage anecdotes about her neuroses, sinking defeats, and soaring successes, but she mostly just plows through the book sentence by sentence. Anyone interested in Rivers’s life and career will find this audio edition worthwhile. A Little, Brown hardcover.

popularity

311

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Named one of "40 Gifts for the Book Lover on Your List," by Good Housekeeping: The definitive book about Joan Rivers' tumultuous, victorious, tragic, hilarious, and fascinating life.
Joan Rivers was more than a legendary comedian; she was an icon and a role model to millions, a fearless pioneer who left a legacy of expanded opportunity when she died in 2014. Her life was a dramatic roller coaster of triumphant highs and devastating lows: the suicide of her husband, her feud with Johnny Carson, her estrangement from her daughter, her many plastic surgeries, her ferocious ambition and her massive insecurities.
But Rivers' career was also hugely significant in American cultural history, breaking down barriers for her gender and pushing the boundaries of truth-telling for women in public life. A juicy, intimate biography of one of the greatest comedians ever — a performer whose sixty year career was borne, simply, out of a desire to make people laugh so she...

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Last Girl Before Freeway The Life Loves Losses and Liberation of Joan Rivers

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The Life, Loves, Losses, and Liberation of Joan Rivers

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Little, Brown and Company

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   • description: Biography & Autobiography / Rich & Famous
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   • description: Biography & Autobiography / Women