by Kirk Douglas
First published 1988
Kirk Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch Demsky in poverty, the son of a Russian-Jewish immigrant who could not read and made his living hauling rags and scrap. That beginning is the spine of this memoir. Douglas tracks the distance between that boy and the Hollywood star he forced himself into being, and he does not make the journey look clean. He writes with anger about the cost of his ambition, not just to himself but to his children and the people who got close to him. He looks at his failures as a father directly, putting them next to his achievements on screen without letting one cancel the other. This is not a victory lap. Douglas makes the case that the hunger and shame he carried out of his early years drove every choice he made, every role he took, every relationship he damaged. Readers come away with a clear-eyed account of what ambition actually does to a person and to everyone in that person's orbit.
Genres: biography, 20th-century, american, autobiography, memoir
Vibes: candid, introspective, reflective, thought-provoking, unflinching
Tropes: coming-of-age, rags-to-riches, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Hollywood
Period: 20th century
544 pages · Paperback · Simon & Schuster Ltd
Content warnings: emotional-abuse
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