In just a two-year span, Stefani Germanotta, a struggling performer in New York's Lower East Side burlesque scene, has become the global demographic-smashing pop icon known as Lady Gaga. She is a once-in-a-decade artist, a gifted singer, composer, designer, and performance artist who mixes high and low culture, the avant-garde with the accessible, authenticity with artifice.

Who is Lady Gaga? She is a twenty-five-year-old woman whose stage mantra--"I'm a free bitch!"--is the polar opposite of who she is offstage: isolated, insecure, and unable to be alone. She is an outrÉ artist who wanted to be a sensitive singer-songwriter. She is a woman who says no man can ever compete with her career, but who goes back and forth with the ex-boyfriend who said she was too ambitious. She claims not to care what people think, but spends her downtime online, reading what people have to say about her. She claims to be a con artist and utterly authentic. She is never less than compelling.

Based on more than fifty original interviews with friends, employees, rivals, and music industry veterans, Poker Face is the first in-depth biography of the extraordinary cultural phenomenon that is Lady Gaga.