Britney Spears' highs and lows — a timeline from 'The Mickey Mouse Club' to her tell-all memoir

There's a lot of ground to cover when it comes to understanding Britney Spears and processing her decades-long career, which has been repeatedly eclipsed by her controversial conservatorship and tumultuous personal life.

Now, with Spears contextualizing it all in her new book, "The Woman in Me," we're tracking some of her biggest headlines, sprinkled with the backstory she provides in the tell-all.

Spears' take on her life has been described as a Southern Gothic, feminist horror story, with the "Toxic" singer "often recounting her mistreatment by most of the men in her life." There are plenty of takeaways to boot. The tome does little to redeem the men who have shaped her life and career. (It's been a bad week indeed for Jamie Spears, Justin Timberlake and Kevin Federline.)

Here's a look back at Spears' most notable career highs and lows, colored by the personal struggles she experienced along the way:

1981 | Born in Mississippi, raised in Louisiana

The pop princess was born on Dec. 2, 1981, in McComb, Mississippi, to Jamie and Lynne Spears, whom she described in the book as, respectively, a raging alcoholic and a mother "gushing" with blood after giving birth. She has two siblings, older brother Bryan Spears and younger sister Jamie Lynn Spears, of "Zoey 101" and competing-memoir fame.

Spears said her song and dance talents gave her a way to express her voice in a home where it was suppressed: "I worked hard to make things look the way I wanted to," she writes of being an 8-year-old directing her own imaginary music videos. "Nobody in my town seemed to be doing stuff like that. But I knew I wanted to see it in the world, and I tried to make it so."

In her autobiography, "Britney Spears' Heart to Heart," her mom and co-author, Lynne Spears, explained that the family saw to it that her daughter had dance and music lessons even when they were struggling to pay bills. Spears also played basketball in school and worked at a seafood restaurant cleaning shellfish and serving plates of food "while doing my prissy dancing in my cute little outfits," the singer wrote.

1993-1995 | 'The All New Mickey Mouse Club'

After initially failing her first audition for Disney Channel's "The All New Mickey Mouse Club" because she was too young, Spears eventually joined the star-spawning program. She appeared alongside Ryan Gosling, Christina Aguilera, Nikki De Loach and future beau Justin Timberlake on the show.

1998 | Jive Records deal

Spears was 15 when she signed a deal with Jive Records and felt liberated by her ability to perform without fear, even on her notorious early shopping mall tour. But, as she wrote in the book, the media became adversarial and even grotesque almost as quickly. Spears recalled adult journalists asking her questions about her breasts while simultaneously forcing her to comment on the backlash to her skimpy outfits.

"I was a teenage girl from the South," she wrote. "I signed my name with a heart. I liked looking cute. Why did everyone treat me, even when I was a teenager, like I was dangerous?"

1999 | '...Baby One More Time'

Spears' breakout bop — accompanied by its sweet-but-rebellious schoolhouse-romp music video — made her a star at 16 and a and nearly two years (103 weeks) total on the chart. That spring, Spears got tongues a-wagging with cover, but she seemed unstoppable. She launched her first headlining tour that year and won four Billboard Music Awards.