A bit of a mouthful that title isn’t it?!

This was the first new book to hit the shelves following Michael Jackson’s death but it certainly won’t be the last.  It looks at his life in pretty broad strokes without really dwelling on any one period - this is both good and bad in that it really does cover his entire life but at the same time offers little new information for the reader.

There are certainly plenty of pictures which is only right, several of which I’ve never seen before (that I can remember anyway!).  It may be a criticism by others that this is padding to fill the book out a bit and justify the pricetag, but I thought it fitted with the subject and was ultimately justified.  Pages of tracklistings for albums on the other hand did smack a bit of page-filling but I suppose the publisher has to try to appeal to people who are perhaps too young to have owned Off the Wall or Thriller and so can justify their inclusion because of this.

All in all, this book is a nicely presented tribite which defies the fact that the text was written within just a couple of days of Jackson’s death and the entire layout was done and dusted not too long after that.  It’s amazing how something like this can be produced in such a short period of time.  Of course the down side to this hurry is that the text is pretty general and simply reiterates what was alreafy known previously - don’t buy this book if you are looking for any sort of investigative journalist style writing as you won’t find it here.

Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Those books will come, especially as the cause of his death is even yet still shrouded in mystery so for now it’s quite refreshing to read a pretty simple and yet complete tribute to the life and times of possibly the greatest entertainer to walk among us.