Gatecrasher: How I Helped the Rich Become Famous and Ruin the World.

Widdicombe, editor-in-chief of luxury lifestyle magazine Avenue, debuts with a fascinating and punchy account of his more than 20 years reporting society and celebrity gossip for Vanity Fair, Town & Country, and the New York Times. For Widdicombe, being a gossip columnist is a serious job that “requires the skills of a critic, detective, interviewer, and humorist, all balanced like a tray of mismatched glasses”—skills he has honed since arriving in New York City from Australia in 1998. He admits that, “as glamorous as it may look, hanging out with rich people is mainly just stressful and expensive.” Among his many interviewees are Elton John (“We were being provided to the star as an après-show buffet”), Paris Hilton (“a rich person performing being wealthy for the purpose of gaining celebrity”), and Jared Kushner (“a nice-seeming, if somewhat wet, young man”). But most fascinating are his observations on how the nature of “celebrity” itself has changed. He highlights how gossip reporting shifted its focus from the “classic ‘New York Society’ ” of wives of wealthy men who eschewed publicity to a new generation of wealthy people who began to see how publicity could be used to brand themselves. This eye-opening account of a moment when “being wealthy was becoming embraced as a sub-culture" will delight pop culture enthusiasts. [em](July) [/em]