cover image Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography

Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography

Deirdre Bair. Touchstone Books, $43.95 (736pp) ISBN 978-0-671-74180-8

De Beauvoir's extraordinary, long relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre is the focus of this portrait, which combines literary biography, intellectual and oral history and feminist theory. PW called pk the work ``impressively researched. . . . Bair adds much to our knowledge of every aspect of de Beauvoir's life,'' commenting also that pk unfortunately she often overburdens readers with detail. (Aug.)