Elizabeth and Michael: The Queen of Hollywood and the King of Pop; A Love Story

Entertainment biographer Bogle (Heat Wave: The Life and Career of Ethel Waters) here offers a thoughtful overview of the lives of Michael Jackson, filling a significant gap in celebrity biographies—it would be easy to fill a room with books on the stars as separate entities, but comparatively little has been written about their famous friendship. Bogle concentrates on what they shared—even before the two met. Though Taylor was 26 years Jackson’s senior, their experiences as child stars with controlling parents and their histories of drug abuse bonded the two of them in a deeply emotional relationship that, according to Bogle, barely stopped short of romance. Though his prose is repetitive, filling space with awkwardly rehashed phrases and facts, Bogle excels at drawing explicit parallels between Taylor and Jackson’s lives, especially when he relates both stars’ early lives in alternating chapters. Bogle presents them as true soulmates, linked by both celebrity and shared experience. (Aug.)