Inside front cover reads:
"Here for the first time Gene Simmons, leading man of the explosive KISS, tells his story.

Delivered in Gene's own honest, outrageous, uncensored and often hilarious voice, he tells of his early beginnings in Israel of his arrival in New York at the age of eight under the wing of his fiercely protective mother; his first taste of comic books and 1950's pop culture; his developing thirst for fame, fun, and girls and his realisation that playing in a rock band was the key to it all.

Undoubtedly one of the most infamous rock and roll legends alive, Gene tells the inside story of KISS's reign as the biggest, most fiercely adulated band in the world. A story both extraordinary and controversial, Kiss and Make-up reveals at last the truth behind this larger-than-life personality and contains dozens of previously unpublished photographs from Gene's private collection.

Finally the real story of the man behind the make-up."

Back cover:
"From Gene Simmons, the notorious mainman of the supergroup KISS, comes the whole wild, shocking, and never-before-revealed story of how an immigrant kid from Israel became an American rock icon, and created a band whose influence and aura has endured for three decades"

Inside back cover:
"KISS has released 37 records and has sold 80 million albums worldwide. Gene Simmons has also acted in films and television, has written and produced albums for other recording artists, has managed the recording career of, among others, Liza Minelli, and was founder and president of his own record label, Simmons Records/RCA. He has recently launched his film and TV producing career with 'Detroit Rock City' for New Line Cinema. Gene Simmons lives in Beverley Hills, California. KISS will continue well into the 21st century."
 

[From: Curveboy@aol.com]
Gene Simmons autobiography, "KISS and Make-Up", like most things KISS over the last 10 years, just slightly misses the mark. Does he dish dirt? Yeah, but is it the right dirt?

Several times I lifted my eyes from the pages in disgust. The man is a pig. His views on women are a step above third world. Though he does have some interesting things to say on the nature of relationships later in the book, the first half is less titillating and more disturbing. When he finally gets to the real interesting stuff, the KISS back story, he gives us some but not enough. Gene Simmons is a rock legend. We know this, he tells us so, over and over again in case you forget.

He spends a good 1/4 of the book raging on Peter, and another 1/4 raging on Ace. This is good stuff. It goes a long way towards explaining how Gene and Paul were KISS. But there are items he never quite gets to. His romances with Cher, Diana Ross, and Shannon Tweed are all well detailed yet we never really hear what he thinks about Paul Stanley personally or professionally. Here is arguably the third biggest rock duo of all time (behind Lennon/McCartney and Jagger/Richards) and he never gets to why they've worked so well for almost 30 years.

He also breezes though the Vinnie Vincent years, which given all the high's and lows that came with it should have made for several pages of good reading and not just the few paragraphs that made it in.

He gets a few things wrong too. "She" was never, and will never be on the Hotter Than Hell album. He talks about writing with Bob Dylan for the Psycho Circus album, and while this may have happened, he actually wrote with Bob around the Revenge album. As it turns out the average KISS fan may have a better grasp on KISStory than one of the founders.