The Vanity Fair Diaries: 1983-1992

The pathbreaking editor records her greatest success and the effervescent media-biz surrounding it in this scintillating memoir. Brown (The Diana Chronicles) collects diary from her editorship at Vanity Fair, which she made into a must-read trendsetter with a mix of glamorous photo spreads (a picture of a nude and heavily pregnant Demi Moore became an icon), high-toned tabloid sagas of celebrities-in-distress like Claus von Bulow and Princess Di, and probing feature articles like William Styron's depression confessional "Darkness Visible." It's a frenzied story of last-minute photo dramas ("There was a problem getting the horse into the elevator"), editing tussles, pilgrimages to beg ads from fashion designers, and wary sparring with the magazine's shy but ruthless owner Si Newhouse. Swirling around the VF narrative is Brown's reportage on countless power lunches and cocktail parties, full of hilariously acid portraits of movie stars, socialites, literary lions and plutocrats, from Wallace Shawn ("a small, anxious hippo" with "a creaky voice and twinkly, creased-up eyes") to Donald Trump (a "sneaky, petulant infant" with a "pouty Elvis face" who poured a drink down a VF staffer's back after she wrote something unflattering about him). The result is a witty, exuberant portrait of print journalism's last golden age. Photos. (Nov.)