Laurents takes us through the trials and joys of watching his work staged or filmed (Home of the Brave, The Time of the Cuckoo, et al.), of working with stars (Shirley Booth, Kim Stanley, Robert Redford, Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Melvyn Douglas, Katharine Hepburn...), of dealings and friendships with Hollywood greats (Irene Selznick, Charlie Chaplin, Anatole Litvak, Alfred Hitchcock, the Gene Kellys). He writes about the blacklist days (Irving Lazar to Laurents: "You're blacklisted, my dear boy ... The studio said you were too expensive before I mentioned money!"); about his collaborations with Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, and Stephen Sondheim on West Side Story, and with Robbins and Sondheim on Gypsy; about jumpstarting Barbra Streisand's career in her first Broadway show (Laurents directed it); about the meteoric success of La Cage aux Folles; about his roots (Brooklyn), his education (Cornell, as in The Way We Were), his analysis, and the men and women he was in love with.

Funny, fierce, honest -- a life richly lived and told.