Madonna
A Rebel Life - THE ULTIMATE GIFT FOR ANY MADONNA FAN
Will be published approx. on 8. October 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
880 pages
978-1-5293-3204-9 (ISBN)
Description
* A SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN and TELEGRAPH Book of the Year *
'Enthralling' GUARDIAN
'Intelligent and insightful' DAILY MAIL
'Revealing' DAILY TELEGRAPH
With her arrival on the music scene in the early 1980s, Madonna generated nothing short of an explosion - as great as that of Elvis or the Beatles - taking the world by storm with her liberated politics and breathtaking talent.
But Madonna was more than just a pop star. Everywhere, fans gravitated to her as an emblem of a new age, one in which feminism could shed the buttoned-down demeanour of the 1970s and feel relevant to a new generation. Amid the scourge of AIDS, she brought queer identities into the mainstream, fiercely defending a person's right to love whomever - and be whoever - they wanted. Despite fierce criticism, she never separated her music from her political activism. And as an artist, she never stopped experimenting. Madonna existed to push past boundaries by creating provocative and visionary music, videos, films and live performances that changed culture globally.
Deftly tracing Madonna's story from her Michigan roots to her rise to super-stardom, master biographer Mary Gabriel captures the dramatic life and achievements of one of the greatest artists of our time.
'Enthralling' GUARDIAN
'Intelligent and insightful' DAILY MAIL
'Revealing' DAILY TELEGRAPH
With her arrival on the music scene in the early 1980s, Madonna generated nothing short of an explosion - as great as that of Elvis or the Beatles - taking the world by storm with her liberated politics and breathtaking talent.
But Madonna was more than just a pop star. Everywhere, fans gravitated to her as an emblem of a new age, one in which feminism could shed the buttoned-down demeanour of the 1970s and feel relevant to a new generation. Amid the scourge of AIDS, she brought queer identities into the mainstream, fiercely defending a person's right to love whomever - and be whoever - they wanted. Despite fierce criticism, she never separated her music from her political activism. And as an artist, she never stopped experimenting. Madonna existed to push past boundaries by creating provocative and visionary music, videos, films and live performances that changed culture globally.
Deftly tracing Madonna's story from her Michigan roots to her rise to super-stardom, master biographer Mary Gabriel captures the dramatic life and achievements of one of the greatest artists of our time.
Reviews / Votes
Mary Gabriel has dared to write a biography of a woman with whom the entire world is on a first-name basis. Here, she reveals Madonna as a rock-and-roll suffragette, managing the stress test of her personal life and using the power of music to bring about social change. Exquisitely detailed in her storytelling, Gabriel convinces us that we all still vogue in the House of Madonna -- Brad Gooch, author of CITY POET: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF FRANK O'HARA Mary Gabriel's astonishing book with its pointillist detail feels fresh, surprising, vital, and necessary. It's thrilling to be reminded of how brave Madonna has been-to a fault! It doesn't matter where it springs from, because the results are the same: a singular, towering career that changed the culture -- Jonathan Van Meter, author of THE LAST GOOD TIME Mary Gabriel eloquently tells the engrossing story of how Madonna combined music, dance, art, fashion, theater and pop stardom to develop a completely contemporary way to be an artist. It chronicles how her embrace of the artistic vanguard transformed popular culture -- Jeffrey Deitch, author of ART IN THE STREETS Madonna built the house in which nearly all female artists now live . . . A Rebel Life brings home not just her obvious willpower and strength, but her fearlessness and sheer intelligence -- Suzanne Moore * Daily Telegraph * This meticulous study puts the shape-shifting star in proper context . . . It's a mark of Gabriel's skill that she has managed to wrestle this complex, sprawling, eventful life into a book that rarely flags and conveys its subject's wider significance without tipping into hagiography * Guardian, *Book of the Day* *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Hodder & Stoughton
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 135 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-5293-3204-9 (9781529332049)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Mary Gabriel is the author of Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement that Changed Modern Art, which won the 2022 NYU/Axinn Foundation Prize for narrative non-fiction and the 2019 Library of Virginia and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts's Mary Lynn Kotz Award. Gabriel's previous book, Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also the author of Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored and The Art of Acquiring: A Portrait of Etta and Claribel Cone. She worked in Washington and London as a Reuters editor for nearly two decades and lives in Ireland.