When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines

This intimate memoir from former Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Carter (Spy: The Funny Years) is at once a sharp look at the art of crafting a story, a collection of fizzy anecdotes about the magazine industry, and a stirring catalog of his efforts to remake Vanity Fair in his own image. The focus is almost exclusively on Carter’s work life, beginning with his employment as a groundman on the Canadian Railroad in the late 1960s before he moved to New York City in the ’70s. There, he helped develop the satirical Spy magazine, worked at Time magazine, and, in 1992, joined Vanity Fair, whose subjects and advertisers were often mocked in the pages of Spy. Balancing grit and glamor, Carter recounts the strain his busy schedule put on his marriage, weighing those difficulties against the perks of collaborating with the likes of Annie Leibovitz and Dominick Dunne. Especially memorable is a section on the Vanity Fair Oscar party, which Carter launched in 1994 to increase the publication’s standing among the entertainment industry’s elite. Carter’s wry tone and hard-won insights make this a must-read for aspiring journalists and those who lived through the good old days of print magazines. It’s a blast. Agent: Robert Barnett, Williams & Connolly. (Mar.)