While he presents few new facts about Diana’s life — inevitably, given how exhaustively she was covered both before and after death — White takes advantage of a quarter-century’s distance to present the cultural postmortem she deserves. His astute evaluation of what the princess was and continues to be, to the people who knew her and the millions who didn’t, makes a convincing case that her populist presence in the 1990s presaged the politics of the 21st century ... White...employs an overly academic style on occasion, perhaps aiming to resist the hyperbole surrounding Diana ... The obsession, in White’s view, shows no sign of fading away.
Blends a consideration of the subject’s personality with an assessment of their impact, but it’s more scattershot than White’s two previous books ... White’s razor-sharp prose is as pleasurable as ever ... Is that it? There’s plenty of Diana in Dianaworld, but unfortunately, readers expecting an original take on one of the most analyzed women in the world may well have the same reaction.
