Book Review: Lennon Revealed by Larry Kane

Title: Lennon Revealed
Author: Larry Kane
Publisher: Running Press
ISBN: 0-7624-2364-1



I bought this book for Hubby as a late Christmas present when we needed to spend a few extra dollars on Amazon.com to get free shipping. Hubby is a rabid fan of John Lennon, as am I, so I expected the book to be a real treat. It wasn't, though.

Except for the horrifying details of John Lennon's assassination and how the news spread across the city and the world in the hours afterward, Lennon Revealed is 287 pages of the same old, same old tabloid fodder and miscellaneous stuff. I kept finding myself wanting to edit the thing, which tells you something about the quality of the writing. To be fair, the author is not really a writer, as such, but a news reporter of long standing, primarily in Philadelphia. Oh, I know, reporters are writers, but this particular one hasn't the wonderful turn of phrase that some do.

The only really neat thing about this book is that it came with a DVD inside the back cover. On it are three items: the last filmed interview of Lennon and McCartney together in 1968, an interview with author Larry Kane, and a fun piece where Lennon, silliness personified, took over as weatherman on the Philly news station where he pitched in to help with a telethon a few years before his untimely death.

This book is nice to have if you have a collection of Lennon- or Beatles-related stuff, or if you're curious about Lennon but don't really know a lot about the man himself. As reading material, however, it lacks something and I wouldn't recommend it to the reader.