TASCHEN has combined Mailer's original text with Bert Stern's photographs from the legendary The Last Session - widely regarded as the most intimate photographs of Monroe ever taken - to create a fitting tribute to a woman who, at the time of her death in 1962, was the most famous in the world, a symbol of glamour and eroticism for a generation. Although she was revered and adored by the public, her private life was that of a little lost girl, desperate for love and security. Mailer's Marilyn is beautiful, tragic and complex. As Mailer reflects on her life - from her bleak childhood to the mysterious circumstances of her death - she emerges as a symbol of the bizarre decade during which she reigned as Hollywood's biggest female star.