Reviews for Goebbels

The average rating for Goebbels based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-11-26 00:00:00 David F Broderick I'm a huge fan of Angelina Jolie and a couple years ago I made it a mission to see every single one of her movies. Which is how I first heard of Gia Carangi. In the late 1990's Angelina Jolie starred in an HBO biopic called Gia. The movie isn't the best but it handled the life of Gia is a respectful way. Gia Carangi was a part of the first wave of True Supermodels. Gia's contemporaries were women like Iman, Beverly Johnson, Janice Dickinson & Jerry Hall. Gia could have become a superstar but Gia was a very unhappy person and she treated her unhappiness with drugs. Heroin to be exact. Her career only lasted from 1978-1983 and in 1986 she died of AIDS at the much too young age of 26. Gia went from making $10,000 a day and being the most sought after model in world to destitute and dying in just 5 years. Thing Of Beauty is a hard read. I felt so sad reading this book. She died when I was a infant but as I read this book I just wanted to reach out and hug her. The fashion industry of the late 70's early 80's was a sex and drug obsessed cesspool. Given the family Gia came from and the fact that she lived as an out and proud lesbian woman in a very toxic time, I don't think she ever had a chance of living a happy life. I learned a lot AIDS. Nobody really talks about it anymore. AIDS is just another chronic illness now but back in the 80's it was deadly serious. People wore full body suits and thought that you could catch it from shaking hands or even just being in the same room with an infected person. Gia contacted AIDS in a time when people didn't even know women could catch it. I just wish Gia could have lived long enough to see the advances made in the treatment of AIDS. I recommend Thing Of Beauty to everyone because more people should know about the wild and wonderful Gia Carangi. Also Cindy Crawford used to be known as "Baby Gia" because of her stunning beauty.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-10-23 00:00:00 Bengt Sundberg This is an astonishing story of an incredible woman's life and death. Stephen Fried lays bare everything I wanted to know (and possibly things I didn't know I wanted to know until I read the book) about Gia Carangi. Her story opens with John Keats famous quote from Endymion, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever..." which I think clearly explains what we are thinking and feeling inside when we see a photograph of someone beautiful - they never look unattractive, their life is perfect and they will never grow old and die. That's why I thought this book was amazing. She was reputed to be the very first "supermodel", but her story brings Gia to a very human level, a place where people can identify with her struggle and hopefully learn from her mistakes - something she truly wanted for young children. Mr. Fried has done a fabulous job of getting this message across. Wouldn't it be interesting to see how this book could change the landscape of adolescence with the struggle of self-esteem and lack of purpose many teenage girls endure if it became required reading in middle school? This was also a grievous look at the perception of AIDS in the early 80's, mostly due to the lack of information available. She is believed to be the first "famous" woman to die of this disease and Mr. Fried depicts this reality of her story in a tone that is both sobering and empathetic. In the last chapter of the book, "Beautiful Friend, The End", we learn that Gia is coming to terms with her fate and pens the following: "Life & Death, energy & Peace, if I stopped today, it was fun, Even the terrible pains that have burn me & scarred my soul it was worth having been allowed to walk where I've walked. Which was to hell on earth, Heaven on earth back again, into, under, far in between, through it, in it over and above it." Her demise is truly heartbreaking and Mr. Fried handles it with the utmost care. I read this book a few years before "Gia", an HBO movie starring Angelina Jolie, was released in 1998. I was happy to see that her life was immortalized on screen just as in all the photographs of her which makes the message of her life that much more accessible and meaningful, never a life diminished.