'This well-written page-turner is the definitive biography of the genius of Robin Williams, whose life redefines the highs and lows of the American dream' - Steve Martin 'Tenderly written . . . frequently hilarious' - Sunday Times From his rapid-fire stand-up comedy riffs to his breakout role in Mork & Mindy and his Academy Award-winning performance in Good Will Hunting , Robin Williams was a singularly innovative and beloved entertainer. He often came across as a man possessed, holding forth on culture and politics while mixing in personal revelations - all with mercurial, tongue-twisting intensity as he inhabited and shed one character after another with lightning speed. But as Dave Itzkoff shows in this revelatory biography, Williams's comic brilliance masked a deep well of conflicting emotions and self-doubt, which he drew upon in his comedy and in celebrated films like Dead Poets Society ; Good Morning, Vietnam ; The Fisher King ; Aladdin ; and Mrs Doubtfire , where he showcased his limitless gift for improvisation to bring to life a wide range of characters. And in Good Will Hunting he gave an intense and controlled performance that revealed the true range of his talent. Robin by Dave Itzkoff shows how Williams struggled mightily with addiction and depression - topics he discussed openly while performing and during interviews - and with a debilitating condition at the end of his life that affected him in ways his fans never knew. Drawing on more than a hundred original interviews with family, friends and colleagues, as well as extensive archival research, Robin is a fresh and original look at a man whose work touched so many lives. ______________ '[Itzkoff] has written a book about the truth and the pain that lies in comedy, and the price paid by a sensitive soul' - Amy Poehler 'An amazing read' - Patton Oswalt

""What I wanted after college was a job and my own apartment, but what I needed was a good comeuppance, and that's what I got." " When Dave Itzkoff graduated from Princeton in 1998-the first member of his family to earn a college degree-he expected to be rewarded with a career, and a life, that mattered. Instead, he ended up convinced that he was selling the entire institution of manhood down the river. After a series of personal and professional experiences stripped him of any lingering sense of entitlement, Itzkoff found himself working as an editor at Maxim, the pugnacious frontrunner in a new breed of men's periodicals dubbed "lad magazines." There, he was initiated into a culture of heavily retouched girlie pictorials, dirty jokes, disingenuous sex advice, and shopping guides for expensive electronic gadgetry. And as Maxim continued its inexorable rise to become the most successful men's magazine in modern publishing history, Itzkoff was left wondering what his work-and his life-really meant. Lads is the hilarious, heartbreaking story of Dave Itzkoff's efforts to define himself as a man while working at a magazine that was purveying a vision of young manhood-a state of perpetual adolescence-that was seductive to all but viable for none. Lads takes us deep inside one young man's struggle with identity, responsibility, and sexuality, in an unsparingly candid account of how men really relate to one another, as fathers and sons, as employers and employees, as colleagues and friends. Lads is trenchant. Lads is perceptive. Lads is alarmingly funny. This is an unforgettable debut from a young writer of astounding talent. "From the Hardcover edition."