The Vanity Fair Diaries: My Years at the Magazine that Defined the Decade by Tina Brown

The Vanity Fair Diaries is the story of an Englishwoman—barely out of her twenties, Oxford-educated, Fleet Street honed—who arrives in Manhattan on a mission. Summoned from London to attempt a do-or-die rescue of Condé Nast's flailing new flagship, Vanity Fair, she is instantly plunged into the competitive maelstrom of the New York media world and the backstabbing court rivalries of the planet's slickest, most glamour-focused magazine company.

Here are the inside stories of Vanity Fair scoops and covers that sold millions—the Reagan kiss, the meltdown of Princess Diana's marriage to Prince Charles, the sensational Annie Leibovitz cover of a gloriously pregnant, naked Demi Moore. In the diary's cinematic pages, the drama, the comedy, and the struggle of running an "it" magazine come to life.

Astute, open-hearted, often riotously funny, Tina Brown's The Vanity Fair Diaries is a fascinating real-time chronicle of a remarkable woman's adventures in a glittering—and scorching—era.