Leigh retains her hold over the imagination as Scarlett O"Hara, as a great screen beauty, and as a notable actor. This biography is a serious assessment, which reads well, with a novelist"s sense of telling scene and strong dialogue. Through new source material, it argues a coherent view of this troubled actor, showing her fated to self-destruction from her early impulsiveness, through her physical illnesses, to her later manic-depressive episodes. The lavishness, the emotional recklessness, and the artistic competitiveness are clearly delineated. But she was a tragic figure, playing out her own doom. The book is apparently well researched