Condé Nast: The Man and His Empire -- A Biography

by Susan Ronald

Overview

The first biography in over thirty years of Condé Nast, the pioneering publisher of Vogue and Vanity Fair and main rival to media magnate William Randolph Hearst.

Condé Nast’s life and career was as high profile and glamorous as his magazines. Moving to New York in the early twentieth century with just the shirt on his back, he soon became the highest paid executive in the United States, acquiring Vogue in 1909 and Vanity Fair in 1913. Alongside his editors, Edna Woolman Chase at Vogue and Frank Crowninshield at Vanity Fair, he built the first-ever international magazine empire, introducing European modern art, style, and fashions to an American audience.

Credited with creating the “café society,” Nast became a permanent fixture on the international fashion scene and a major figure in New York society. His superbly appointed apartment at 1040 Park Avenue, decorated by the legendary Elsie de Wolfe, became a gathering place for the major artistic figures of the time. Nast launched the careers of icons like Cecil Beaton, Clare Boothe Luce, Lee Miller, Dorothy Parker and Noel Coward. He left behind a legacy that endures today in media powerhouses such as Anna Wintour, Tina Brown, and Graydon Carter.

Written with the cooperation of his family on both sides of the Atlantic and a dedicated team at Condé Nast Publications, critically acclaimed biographer Susan Ronald reveals the life of an extraordinary American success story.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250180025
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/03/2019
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Born and raised in the United States, SUSAN RONALD is a British-American biographer and historian of several books, including A Dangerous Woman, Hitler’s Art Thief, and Heretic Queen. She lives in rural England with her writer husband.

Table of Contents

Note on Spelling and Expressions ix

Prologue: The Ringmaster-1919 1

Part I How to Make a Millionaire

1 Living Down Mr. Disappoint 11

2 Fanny's "Even-Handed" Justice 20

3 It's Not What You Know … 27

4 The Adman Before Mad Men 34

5 Battling the Fakirs, Swindlers, and Manufacturers of Bad Whiskeys 39

6 A Natural Talent to Sniff Out Life's Pattern 48

7 How to Build a New Woman's Railroad 59

Part II The Man Who Made Vogue, Vanity Fair, House & Garden, and So Much More …

8 The Genie Bean Counter and His Class Publication 75

9 What Women Want 85

10 Couturiers, Cutthroats, and Conflict 97

11 The Spirited Mrs. Chase Lands Her Big Fish 107

12 Enter Stage Right Frank Crowninshield-and Brogue 116

13 From Vanity Fair to Mayhem 125

14 Back to the Business of "Fried Fish and Stewed Eels" 138

15 How to Keep a Park Bench Warm 145

Part III Roaring with the Twenties

16 "Ain't We Got Fun?" 159

17 The High Priestess Meets Her Forces of Nature 167

18 All Those Flaming "Bright Young Things" 181

19 Let the Good Times Roll 195

20 The New and Renewed Kids in Town 200

21 Fireflies in the Garden Paradise 211

22 Casting for Pearls 222

23 Boom, Crash, Bang, Clatter 229

Part IV Saving the Empire

24 Beware of Frenemies 241

25 In the Death Throes 257

26 The Stain of Defection 267

27 A Very British Salvation 277

28 But Who's to Save Vanity Fair? 287

29 "Of Cabbages …" 299

30 "… and Kings" 305

31 Answering the Distant Cry of War 317

Part V With the Eye of an Eagle

32 How to Win in the End 331

33 The King Is Dead 339

34 A New Leaf 346

35 A New House, a New Empire 355

Coda 365

Author's Note and Acknowledgments 369

Dramatis Personae 373

Select Bibliography 387

Notes 393

Index 421

Editorial Reviews

05/06/2019

The magazine mogul who turned Vogue into a fashion bible was the calm center of a swirling Jazz Age culture, according to this fizzy biography. Historian Ronald (Heretic Queen) toasts Condé Nast as a canny businessman and marketer who, after his 1909 purchase of Vogue, pioneered a new kind of magazine catering to the upper-crust “New Woman” and high-end advertisers; he then bought Vanity Fair, which became an icon of literary and pictorial flair to a New York “café society” of socialites, artists and celebrities in the Roaring ’20s. Ronald’s Nast is polished, tasteful, unpretentious, polite, kind, and rather dull: he threw fabulous parties in a Manhattan penthouse flowing with bootleg champagne, but often spent them in his library playing bridge. Fortunately, Ronald regularly leaves the bland Nast to follow livelier figures, such as VF theater critic and Algonquin Roundtable wit Dorothy Parker, whom Nast fired for courting libel suits with her acidic reviews. Ronald writes in a vivid, sparkling, amused style—critic Alexander Woolcott “resembled an overfed human owl with eyes like raisins that sunk behind his spectacles into his jowls”—and revels in the era’s repartee, clothes and gossip. Her portrait of Nast doesn’t leave a strong impression, but her evocation of the vibrant scene around him will keep readers entertained. Photos. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Condé Nast:

“In her new biography, Susan Ronald describes [Nast’s] ambitions and excesses, and the simultaneously fashionable and intellectual world he inhabited.” —The New Republic

“Groundbreaking…This big, glittering book provides a full and human portrait of Condé Nast. Lively, detailed descriptions of the early decades of the 20th century complete the setting of Nast’s life story.” —Christian Science Monitor

“Ronald’s account succeeds as a social history of this fizzy time as she documents the interconnected worlds covered by Vogue and Vanity Fair — fashion, high society, literature, the arts and entertainment — from writers Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley of the Algonquin Round Table to New York socialites won over by Nast’s charm offensive.” —Newsday

"With her breezy, gossipy style, Ronald brings to life the story of the influential American publisher and his magazines." —Library Journal

“[Ronald] does an exceptional job of integrating the story of Nast’s personal fortunes and misfortunes and the lives of those he sought to refine and educate.” —Booklist

"The thoroughly researched story of Condé Nast...a highly flattering biography of an important figure in American publishing." —Kirkus Reviews

"Ronald writes in a vivid, sparkling, amused style...and revels in the era’s repartee, clothes and gossip. ...her evocation of the vibrant scene around [Nast] will keep readers entertained." —Publishers Weekly

Praise for A Dangerous Woman:

"Energetic...Ronald's group portrait is breath-taking and quite modern." —New York Times Book Review

“A lively picture of the world in which Florence moved, with all its intricate financial shenanigans, rivalrous investors and glittering social occasions.” —Wall Street Journal

“Ronald traces Gould’s amoral life and high-flying times…elegant and beautiful, she used sex and charm as her currency, trading them for favors and luxuries that let her sail through the war years unscathed." —New York Post

Praise for Hitler's Art Thief:

“[A] riveting portrait of Gurlitt, who detested the Nazis, and stole from them, but did their bidding in the name of ‘saving modern art’.” —The New Yorker

“Susan Ronald situates Gurlitt’s life and career amid the turmoil of Weimar Germany and then the evolution of Nazi art-looting campaigns from the late 1930s to the end of World War II. Ms. Ronald, a popular historian, presents many new details about Gurlitt’s dealings.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Susan Ronald’s new book tells the back story of what may be the most startling art-world bust in modern history.” —USA Today

“Susan Ronald chronicles one man’s extraordinary career of thievery…an exhaustively researched and well written book that has a cautionary tale for all of us.” —Forbes

From the Publisher

2019-06-09
A sympathetic life of the publisher of Vanity Fair, Vogue, and other stylish magazines.

Ronald, who has published a number of other biographies (Hitler's Art Thief: Hildebrand Gurlitt, the Nazis, and the Looting of Europe's Treasures, 2015, etc.), returns with the thoroughly researched story of Condé Nast (1873-1942), following him from birth to death (both in New York) and charting his rise in the publishing world, his significant financial difficulties during the Depression, his married and love lives (not always the same), and his battles with prostate cancer and, finally, a weak heart. Throughout, Ronald's tone is deeply admiring as she chronicles Nast's work ethic, appearance, devotion to his staff members (he "had an anaphylactic reaction to firing people"), and his stellar parties. A first marriage did not work out; nor did his second to a woman some 30 years his junior. The author also tells us—more than once—that Nast attracted "some of the most stunning women in the world," though he "never used his position or power on women." Later, suffering the aftereffects of prostate cancer and its dire treatments, he endured permanent erectile dysfunction. Appearing on Nast's vast stage were some of the most creative characters of the day, including Robert Benchley, Robert Sherwood, Coco Chanel, Truman Capote, Dorothy Parker, and Cecil Beaton. (A long list is in the backmatter.) Nast got along with most of them (though some were fired), and the author praises them, as well. The one exception is Clare Brokaw (later Clare Boothe Luce), whom Ronald assails more than once for her self-interest and her insatiable sexual appetites. Readers interested in business history will enjoy the strategies and principles dear to Nast and the accounts of his competition with William Randolph Hearst.

A highly flattering biography of an important figure in American publishing.

Kirkus Reviews