Much has been written about Garbo over the years, but Gottlieb, a former editor of this magazine, has produced a particularly charming, companionable, and clear-eyed guide to her life and work—he has no axe to grind, no urgent need to make a counterintuitive case for her lesser movies, and he’s generous with his predecessors. By the end of the biography, I felt I understood Garbo better as a person, without the aura of mystery around her having been entirely dispelled—and, at this point, who would want it to be?.

The why and wherefore of this woman’s extraordinary life and career is masterfully told in Robert Gottlieb’s new book, Garbo, handsomely published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, with more than 250 splendid duotone photos, an extremely thorough filmography...all part of a terrific 100-page 'Garbo Reader'.

Gottlieb seems for this project to have consumed everything written in English about Garbo and her circle.

Gottlieb is a renowned New York editor who at the age of 90 has earned the right to be self-indulgent and he chats wittily about his idol while leaving others to do the hard work of analysing Garbo’s appeal.

Robert Gottlieb’s new biography, Garbo, helps elucidate the mystery of why his subject removed herself from the world. Happily, too, the book is great fun to read (and, with more than 250 photographs, gorgeous to look at). Gottlieb...has an easygoing command of the material and describes Garbo’s films, and the business behind them, with insight and wit.

Gottlieb suffers, like others before him, from a distinct lack of new information about Garbo’s life.

Countless books have been written about Greta Garbo since her self-imposed exile in the 1940s, yet this comprehensive biography may be the final word.

... engaging and intelligent.

Searching and sensitive.

Skillful, admiring biography.