It should go without saying that you only read someone's biography if you are really interested in that person. So if you are a fan of Ebert's work, if you always turned to him first for a review of a newly released movie (or even an old movie) or if you regularly visited his web site to catch up on his blog, as I did, then this book is likely for you. Be forewarned that you won't get a lot of "movie" stuff. There is some, to be sure, but this is a story of his life, and there was a lot more to his life than movies. He spends many chapters at the front on his childhood memories, his experiences as a reporter in high school and college, his time overseas, his love of the city of London, his entrance into professional reporting at the Chicago Sun-Times and the characters he met there, his alcoholism. This takes up more than the first half of the book, with little discussion of the movies along the way. 
 So don't shy away from the book if you think it's just about the movies. These are his reflections on his entire life. Much of this was assembled from his blog posts, so there is some repetition. But he's a good writer. He won the Pulitzer, after all. 
 He name-drops a lot, but then, he was in the entertainment business, and he was a naturally sociable person, so that comes with the territory. I get the true sense that, despite his world travels and all of the famous, high-profile people he spent time with, he was never false to the midwestern boy inside. When he lost his jaw, and was dreaming of food he would never eat again, it wasn't a Michelin-starred restaurant in France that he dreamed of, it was root beer, Steak 'n Shake, and cheap candy. And he missed talking with people over dinner more than he missed the dinner itself.