A Woman of the Times: Journalism, Feminism, and the Career of Charlotte Curtis

Charlotte Curtis was the most noted woman writer and editor associated with the New York Times at the time of her death from breast cancer in 1987 at the age of 59. With a sharp eye for detail and a solid sense of historical context, Greenwald charts Curtis's trajectory as a journalist, focusing largely on her 17-year tenure at the Times and her rise from a society reporter for the women's pages (known as the ""4 Fs"": food, fashion, family and furnishings) to the editor of the section to the editor of the op-ed page. Born in 1928 to an upper-middle class Cleveland family, Curtis graduated from Vassar and took a job at the Columbus Citizen-Journal. Ten years later, in 1961, she moved to the Times and quickly became known across the nation for her tart, insightful interviews, reporting and commentaries. Greenwald is at her best when detailing Curtis's significant contributions to journalism. She contends that by regarding herself as a ""sociologist,"" critiquing her subjects and placing them in a broader social context, Curtis reinvented how U.S. newspaper journalists cover society and celebrity events. Greenwald makes the case that Curtis's style helped lay the groundwork for ""new journalism,"" the advent of newspaper ""style"" sections and aspects of Truman Capote and Dominick Dunne's work. Greenwald also evenhandedly delineates why Curtis refused to join other women at the Times in a class-action discrimination suit. Although it doesn't offer as broad and rich a portrait of Curtis's 1960s and 1970s milieu as it might, this is an intelligent, accessible biography of a minor but important figure in the history of journalism. (May)