![dek](https://content.time.com/time/daily/2008/0810/dt_john_lennon_1020.jpg)
More moving and less plausible than most fiction, Lennon's life is one of the great 20th century fables, and it's told here definitively by a major Beatles scholar. Even as Lennon went from young tough to global pop star to hippie prophet, he never ceased to be a shattered, motherless little boy. When have so many ever followed anyone so lost?
Grade: A