Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love

A collection of candid and intensely personal diary entries, personal letters, song lyrics, poetry, and never-before-seen photographs record the unimaginable highs and despairing lows of Courtney Love, one of the most compelling and creative figures in the world of popular culture. Reprint.

Love writes in her introduction: "I have always said that I would never write a book, and I really haven't." It's true-"diaries" is something of a misnomer, as "scrapbooks" would more accurately describe the collection of old photographs, hand-scrawled song lyrics and other documents that fill these pages. The materials assembled by Stander cover every phase of the rock star's "wild pirate life," from a failed childhood audition for The Mickey Mouse Club to an e-mail exchange with Lindsay Lohan about dealing with negative press coverage.

(The compilation is so up-to-date it even includes her shocked reactions to the revelations about JT Leroy.) Along the way there are mimeographed flyers for early Hole concerts, a picture of the actual heart-shaped box that inspired Kurt Cobain to write the Nirvana song and photo after photo of Love herself, from candid backstage shots to more polished celebrity portraits.

A foreword by Carrie Fisher and an afterword by political activists Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards (Manifesta) each, in their own way, celebrate Love as an unrestrained feminist, but the best way to understand her may be to plunge directly into the raw materials. One thing's for sure: you really have never seen a celebrity memoir like this.

"Extraordinary and fascinating." -- Harper's Bazaar

"Fascinating. . . a killer conversation piece to lay out in your living room." -- Sam Jemielity, Playboy

"The most engaging and intoxicating work that Love has produced since Live Through This." -- David Schmader, The Stranger

"This book may be the most direct and honest work that Love has done to date." -- Jac Chebatoris, Newsweek

"Undeniably a reflection of Love's psyche, confirming that Love's allure lies in her glorious disarray." -- Lisa Levy, Salon

"Intimate . . . A collage of a life spent in pursuit of validation, fueled by her relentless creativity . . . This book may be the most direct and honest work that Love has done to date." -Jac Chebatoris, Newsweek

"Exhibits a heretofore unappreciated level of self-knowledge." -Rebecca Winters Keegan, Time