Hers was a brief life that still fascinates the world. Marilyn Monroe was born in obscurity and deprivation, and rose to become a legend of her century, a great actress, and a lover of the most famous men in America—only to die young and under suspicious circumstances, leaving behind a mystery that remains unsolved to this day.

Anthony Summers interviewed more than six hundred people, laying bare the truths—sometimes funny, often sad—about this brilliant, troubled woman. The first to gain access to the files of Monroe’s last psychiatrist, Summers uses the documents toexplain her tangled psyche and her dangerous addiction to medications. He establishes, after years of mere rumor, that President Kennedy and his brother Robert were both intimately involved with Monroe in life—and in covering up the circumstances of her death.