Even as a teenager, Stanley Kubrick was documenting his world through photography. When he sold his first photograph at the age of seventeen, Kubrick had already begun telling stories through pictures. Without any formal education in film-making, Kubrick taught himself through photography and by spending many hours in his neighborhood movie theatre. At twenty-one, he financed and created his own short film, Day of the Fight, completely on his own, thus beginning a career in cinema that included such masterworks as 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange and Dr. Strangelove.

Despite worldwide controversy and acclaim, the public knew little about a man who was reclusive and intensely private. Vincent LoBrutto's comprehensive biography of Kubrick contains interviews with those who knew him during his formative years, as well as accounts by his cinema colleagues - revealing a hitherto unknown personal side to an enigmatic man of genius.