I bought this first edition James Dean biography knowing nothing about it. It wasn’t until I was reading Lew Bracker’s memoir that I learned Joe Hyams was a friend of James Dean. I wanted to make sure I got his book, so I checked through my books and found I had just bought it. This is how I have built my James Dean book collection. I buy books others mention in their books.

James Dean a little boy lost by Joe Hyams is a rare biography written by someone who actually knew James Dean. There are memoirs of course by people who were friends with James Dean, but those books only cover that one relationship not Dean’s entire life. Besides being a friend of James Dean, Hyams also interviewed many people in James Dean life, both right after his death in 1955 and 30 years later. This made for quite a well rounded biography. I learned a lot. A Little Boy Lost is very entertaining, very informative and very detailed. It is SO much better than The James Dean Story which did not give me any new information.