This fantastic book weaves a story about Jewish life in Czarist Russia that is endearing...and unfortunately, gone forever. This effort succeeds on many levels..as a historical footprint, family biography, and wonderful personality sketches. Best of all, it chronicles the many sucesses, and many tragedies of the Bercinsky family. To any that are interested in Jewish family life in the Czarist "Pale of Settlement"...this is a must read!

A fascinating account of the life and times of a self-made legend, who lived life by her own rules and celebrated her sexuality on an astonishing level. The book provided mcuh insight to the times, as well as the motives and cunning of Mae West. However, I would have liked to read more about her later life, seeing as she lived another forty years after where the book drops off. All in all, a really meticulous and well done biography.

"Becoming Mae West" is simply the best book written about the star because it is focused and meticulously researched, employing primary sources when available. Ms Leider's book has the authority without sacrificing readability; the author writes well. The fascinating part of West's life is how she cobbled together an act and a personality that is an amalgam of Police Gazette melodrama, the comic camp of female impressionist Bert Savoy, and the daring sexual style and musical sense of the great African American blues women. Mae West's sense of possibilities allowed her to transform herself from a pudgy Jewish/Irish girl with more guts than talent into a blond sex symbol of amazonian proportions (okay, she used six inch platform shoes) who refined the rough soubrette type into a witty American icon. Emily Leider tells this story well. For those who wanted the dirt on West's declining decades, Ms. Leider sketches it in to complete the tale. But as Leider warns the reader, it was the act of Becoming Mae West that prompted her to write this book, not the effort of a woman entrapped by her creation to preserve it. Highly recommended.

Emily Wortis Leider has written a biography of Mae West that is more than a rehash of her films and a retelling of her famous lines. Leider writes well and entertainingly and has researched her subject conscientiously. The result is a clearer picture of who Mae West was as a person and how she "became" the character that became her. Leider states her intention early and clearly. While her bio does cover West's entire life, her films and her efforts to remain an icon, Leider is more interested in how the little girl from Brooklyn became a musical soubrette, a vaudeville star, a playwright and stellar star of stage and screen. Along the way we get revealing glimpses into the show business of the early 20th century, America's social attitudes and the personal rebellions that would emerge into movements. Highly recommmeded.