Reviews and Coverage of Oprah: A Biography
“[A]n impeccably researched and well-organized look into the unlikely life of a self-made woman who used her poor upbringing as a steppingstone to build an astonishing media empire…Oprah is, in many ways, a brave and audacious book…. Oprah, the book, methodically traces the rise of Oprah, the woman, in fast-moving chapters about her upbringing, career, romances and causes, all of which highlight her many charms and contradictions.”
Susan Carpenter
Los Angeles Times
April 15, 2010
“[T]his book is a fascinating and indispensible window onto contemporary life on many levels.”
J. J. Phillips
Konch Magazine
Winter 2011
“[Oprah] has lifted the lid on one of the most enigmatic TV legends of our time.”
Melbourne Herald Sun
November 27, 2010
“[Kelley] has a very powerful understanding of what makes a modern celebrity. She gets the journey, to use a favourite Oprah word, but she also gets the cost of the journey.”
Andrew O’Hagan
London Review of Books
November 4, 2010
“I [found] well-argued the stages of Winfrey’s own rise; she did not spring fully armed as Athena did from the head of Zeus with all the answers about dysfunctional relationships and recipes for self-realization fully spelled out…. There’s also a similarly interesting through-line in the book about the evolution of the talk-show form that Winfrey was instrumental in shaping.”
Elizabeth Guider
The Hollywood Reporter*
April 22, 2010
“Included [in Kelley’s research files] are transcripts of 2,732 interviews Winfrey has given. Add to that the 850 interviews Kelley did on the billionaire TV talk show host and you have Oprah: A Biography … all 525 footnoted pages of it.”
Craig Wilson
USA Today
April 12, 2010
“The image of Oprah as America’s benevolent earth mother is about to take a serious hit, thanks to — who else? — biographer Kitty Kelley…”
Roxanne Roberts
Washington Post
April 12, 2010
“John Tesh acknowledged Monday that he and Oprah Winfrey were once an item – one of the juicy tidbits in a new tell-all biography about the talk show queen.”
Katie Nelson
New York Daily News
April 12, 2010
“A Kitty Kelley biography of Oprah Winfrey is one of those King Kong vs. Godzilla events in celebrity culture.”
Lauren Collins
The New Yorker
April 19, 2010
“Kitty Kelley’s just-released book ‘Oprah’ contains a number of interesting media tidbits…”
Howard Kurtz
Washington Post
April 12, 2010
“For me, the most surprising scene is the one in which she calls room service at a hotel to order a snack of two pecan pies, which she immediately consumes…It is jarring, as is the detail about the heated dog kennel at her former country estate in Indiana.”
Deobrah Solomon
New York Times Magazine
April 5, 2010
“Kitty Kelley’s name will not be showing up on any of Oprah Winfrey’s lists of favorite things.”
Janet Maslin
New York Times
April 11, 2010
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*Elizabeth Guilder’s “Kitty Kelley’s Book Tries to Dissect Oprah” is behind a paywall at HollywoodReporter.com, so the above links to a lightly edited version of the review posted by Reuters.