Less familiar with the general society and how many of you here this evening with this be your first visit . Okay. A warm welcome and of course, welcome back to previous attendees. The general society was founded in 1785 by 22 artisans. Today our 234yearold organization continues to serve the peopleof the city of new york. We do this through our cultural and education programs. They include our lecture series which tonights lecture is part of, our general Society Library which will will be celebrating 200 years. Our tuition free Mechanics Institute and the john and mossman lot collection which you are welcome to visit after our talk this evening and that is upstairs. You will find more information on the blue and white postcard on your seats. We have such a wonderful start to this years lectures season and we have the pleasure of welcoming critically acclaimed biographer susan ronald who will discuss her biography of conde nast, the publishing legend of vogue and vanity fair and other illustrious publications. I also want to mention if youve not already done so, you will have an opportunity to purchase this wonderful book which with this absolutely stunning cover later this evening so please be aware that you have this opportunity and im sure susan would be happy to find the book for you. I also want to mention that cspan are filming this talk tonight so this program will be rebroadcast on book tv and when we get to the q and a portion, i want to remind you that anyone whos asking a question that you can also have the opportunity to be featured on book tv. Born and raised in the United States, miss ronald has lived in england for more than 25 years and has come over especially this week to talk about her book. She is the author of a dangerous woman, hitlers art thief. Heretic creek queen, the pirate queen and shakespeares daughter. It is my considerable pleasure to introduce to you susan ronald. [applause] thank you everybody. I just hope our technical problems are at an end. You may see these little steps there on the bottom. Ive decided to write about conde nast really because i tend to write about power and greed. All the people ive written about before, theres another book which isnt on here, have been powerful people. Some of them have been greedy. Almost all of them have had some sort of brush with the law but after a dangerous woman, about Florence Wolf who was married to that youngest sonof jay gould as many of you will certainly know of , i decided that having written about someone who was incredibly powerful, incredibly devious and also the banker to Herman Goering by the end of the war and never ever was tried for her dastardly deeds, i needed to cleanse myself. I wanted to write about a really good person so i told this to my agent and my publisher and they just kind of looked blankly at me and they said you write about power and greed, how could you write about a nice person , it was my agent who suggested i have a look at the Publishing Industry and i said are there any good guys in publishing . Sure enough, he was right though i decided im going to write a book about one of the most powerful people at the turnofthecentury and going into world war ii, conde nast. A lot of you know all the various magazines but they werent all there at the beginning and id like to take youthrough what made Conde Nast Conde Nast. There were a number of fortuitous circumstances, but mostly and i apologize for the quality of some of these photographs, there was his mother pictured on the right. Unfortunately i dont have her as a young woman, this is the only picture the family still has in their possession. She was quite a lady in her own right. Her father was a guy called louis been lost and he settled in st. Louis in the lovely home here. Hewas married three times and had 15 children. And he was extremely wealthy. He was a banker. Apparently a good guy. I know that doesnt exactlygo with the term banker but go with me on this. And he left several Million Dollars tohis children when he died. Conde nast as a child numbers playing in his grandfathers bedroom and its currently still a Historic House on the outskirts of st. Louis for mostly as a wedding venue today but of course esther, his mother only inherited 300,000 by the time the money came down to her. On his fathers side, his grandfather wilhelm nast was born in germany, immigrated to the United States as a teacher but wasalways a sort of depressive kind of a chat , very serious but he converted to methodism and became known as the father of german methodism in north america. Excuse me, in north america. His eldest son william was a man who wanted to be born with a silver spoon in his mouth his family didnt have any so he decided he was going to go off to germany as the american consul to germany and buy himself a uniform so he could hobnob with all the royalties. His father was absolutely beside himself and naturally william nast fell on hard times because he stole money from american citizens while he was there though he left germany quickly under a cloud, took a number of odd jobs and somehow met up with esther benewah in new york city. Conde was eldest son, he had another brother louis who was a great pianist, but conde grew up essentially without a father. At the age of three william nast decided he was going back to europe to make his fortune, actually it was more like hard work was for suckers so conde and two younger sisters who were what they called new women. New women were women who made their own rules, they didnt hang around with chaperones for the turn of the 20th entry who actually were extremely independent and so was his mother. She had to be to keep the family together and of course as the years went on his father stayed away until he was 17. Things got pretty tough in the end. And the only member of the family that stayed close to them was his family who was william nasts younger sister fanny was actually quite a gal herself. She married into money. She loved fine things. She was very stylish in her own way and considering this picture was taken in the 1880s you can see that she did like to look nice. What is amazing is that she married into the Gamble Family of proctor and gamble fame so she decided she was going to help out poor esther to get her sons to an American College that would set them on their way. The only problem is when she went to visit louis apparently was very untidy. He reminded her a great deal of her brother who of course had abandoned the family and she decided she would only send conde nast to georgetown university. Louis never spoke to his brother again. Here is conde nast as he graduated, a very handsome young man. His best friend at college was bob collier and bob collier was of course the air to the collier library. He went on for a year to europe, to england, to oxford, came back, and his father set i will give you colliers weekly because it is failing. Only had Something Like 1000 worth of advertising at the time he gave the weekly over to bob and bob had done a lot of work with conde nast at georgetown and he went to st. Louis and talked conde nast into accepting a 12 a week job with him which he did considering he was the man of the family at that point. Conde nasts father had died so he was no longer a drain on the family and the two worked together very happily indeed for about 15 years. Bob collier pictured left ear was an innovator. He thought about making colliers a generalized magazine but with conde nast pushing him saying we can sell advertising. If we decide to create special issues, we saw the other picture, a remington issue, this was an issue that started at gibsons going in terms of colliers magazine. He overpaid gibson double of what he would normally get at ladies home journal to have it exclusively for two years and that was something conde nast learned about. Bob collier was also very into navigation. His great friend was Orville Wright and together with conde nast they set up the First Ever National newspaper, National Magazine company that had its own work in every major city across america. Conde nast understood that to sell magazines you had to make sure your customer wanted to read the ads that were in it, that your advertiser head to feel he wasnt wasting his money advertising and that you were something called ethical in what you sold. This was the era of crack medicine. Almost every newspaper promised to give you Something Special to cure tar. I dont think i would want swamp root. I dont know about you but that is pretty bad. This product, they could cure absolutely everything. Colliers joined ladys home journal. They believe it is killing americans. You have diabetes readily cured. And assuage your thirst and rapidly decrease your sugar and prevent diabetes shock. We will not go into those products, will we . Cw post who founded post cereals was another one of the people selling his cereal as a medicine. Heres to another year, years and years of steady nerves, clear brains and vigorous health. Bob collier is spurred on by conde nast, and he did and he won. Conde nast learned a great deal from his relationship with bob. Not only that but bob introduced him to his first wife clarice. I dont know if any of you remember a legal firm in new york city that had their offices on fifth avenue for many years but the family came across to america with the marquis do lafayette, George Washingtons friend. They established themselves as International Lawyers in the 19th century and clarice was part of new yorks 400. Conde nast was by now a wealthy man when he married her, 40,000 a year, the only person in america earning more at that time was roosevelt as president. She decided she loved bob collier but bob collier didnt love her. Conde nast was a good second from her point of view. He wasnt after her money. Understood that she held a with hand where society was concerned. The only problem is conde nast understood society was changing, women were changing, their role was changing, they wanted to become independent, they wanted to vote, they wanted their thoughts to be recognized and while certainly clarice felt that was for her too she didnt really like the idea of working for a living because that was beneath a member of the 400 on the social register. Instead, after two years of marriage where she had two children, coup there who was the son and the teak a, the daughter decided to go on to paris and become a soprano. She would because Three Sisters live there as well. One of them had been supporting the artist august rodin as moneymaker, that isnt very good for marriage. Conde nast decided in 1904 to set up on his own. Bob collier was paying more money than he was worth. 40,000 a year in those days was close to 1 million. Essentially he decided he was going to take a plunge into womens fashion. Why womens fashion . At a National Magazine they are going into niche markets. Conde nast had decided that womens fashion was key to the changing role of women. Up until now womens fashion, in terms of the clothing that would be put into patterns had two distinct shortcomings. On patterns where giveaways, it is even more incredible, the fact that there was only one size and conde nast decided the new woman has many sizes. Im going to empower women to make their own clothing and all the sizes they come in and they should discard, enjoy life and be women. And he was right. He ended up allowing ladies home journal to label his home patterns. He is still working for bob collier but due to a number of circumstances he ended up leaving in 1906. 1907 was the first time he tried to buy a vote but failed. He went across to europe at that point to rescue his two children from paris and his wife, she decided she wanted to stay on. She went across, picked up the children and nursemaid, clarice decided she would come home too. In 1909 he bought the code and clarice disappeared again. Nobody knows why but she did. He was lucky enough to buy vogue because its owner at that time, arthur turner, part of colliers, a big club at the time for publishers, he set it up very early on in 1895. He hired on a lady is a male clerk on the left, her name is edna chase. By the time you see her on the right she had been editor of vogue for over 50 years. Conde nast kept her on obviously. Turners sister had been the actual editor at the time he bought it and she basically left over a disagreement over some money. 1912 he decided to buy two more magazines and put them into one, something called house and garden. He has home pattern, house and garden, 1912. By 1914 he decides he would like to set up an interNational Magazine empire dedicated to women and womens fashion. Unfortunately there is something called world war i which began in europe in 1914. For america it began in 1970. 1917. Edna says we are cut off from french fashion, cut off from british mens fashion because of the war but why dont we have the Charity Fashion show. It is it smacks of trade. Imagine these women working on a Charity Fashion show. She said give me a chance and made it a success. She went to mrs. Stuyvesant and fish whose name was mainly and talked her into making a fashion show and telephoned mrs. Astor. It was a done deal. The only problem was it was at the ritz carlton in new york. The only problem with all the models for all the fashions previously were tied to various fashion houses in europe, not in america but mrs. Astor and mrs. Fish were able to cobble together an interesting show of new york fashion. Here it is. The new York City Public Library just found some of the stills and if you go to their website you will see the fashions. As i said the models were tied to other places and as you can see, fortunately conde nast was making clothes in different sizes because not all of them were models. There is more of these at the new York City Public Library and i thought it would be interesting to see. This upset another gentleman called William Randolph hearst who had just bought harvest bizarre. He sent his people out to badmouth vogue and conde nast to get rid of european fortune and not imported to america anymore and they were only out to support new York Clothing designers etc. Etc. Conde nasts representative arrived in paris during the war, a big fat check for seamstresses who have been put out of work with so hearst won the first round but wasnt going to give up. He never did that. Come 1915 two things happened, most important real lunch with the gentleman who founded the coffee house in this building, frank was a great affection otto of modern art, he had acres of friends throughout new york city and conde nast had lunch with him at the coffee house. He said i have a problem. I bought two magazines called dress and vanity fair. I am a publisher, not an editor. What am i getting wrong . Frank said it is very simple. You have to make it sizzle. You have to make a Cocktail Party where every time somebody turns the page they are actually joining you in a conversation, they are understanding what it is, everybody we read about and so conde nast decided to hire frank as an editor for vanity fair on handshake. They had one competitor at the time, hl lincoln was the editor and a smart set where they said one civilized reader is worth 1000 boneheads. Smart that eventually went out of business. A very friendly rivalry between them. George mason and that working at vanity fair after it closed. Conde nast believed in hiring the best people no matter what. It didnt matter whether they were gay, lesbian, jewish, catholic, black, it didnt matter. What mattered was talent, didnt matter if we were known, they hired a girl called Dorothy Rothschild to write captions for vogue. The one that caught franks i, she kept writing poems on franks desk to transfer over from little vogue into vanity fair. Finally he agreed to take her on. He also wanted to take on someone to make vanity fair articles more substantial so brought on the chap in the middle, a guy called robert benchley, one of the funniest people i ever read about, his own biography is absolutely hysterical. Robert benchley was a harvard graduate, editor of the harvard lampoon, he got the job because he was going to get very serious. I open the book with one of the incidents that happened when they were working there and went on to win oscar for a short produced by mgm called how to sleep. It is hysterically funny if you ever get a hold of it. Dorothy had gone to other things, the third person in the picture is Robert Sherwood who is 6 foot 8. He is fresh out of the army in 1919 and came to work. He said he was a very good writer. Frank wanted to believe him. He had been very wounded during the war, he had been shot in the legs. As dorothy would say how did they miss his heart . This guy was enormous. Sherwood would go on, to win four pulitzer prizes, these were all unknowns but they all misbehaved tremendously and of course ended up getting fired. It was all because dorothy decided as theater critic by now that she was going to go after broadway producers and ended up libeling them. So really had no choice. Conde nast really wanted to fire her but knew she had to go and poor frank had to do it. During the war, he sets up British Vogue because he cant export paper from america during world war i. And d sides at the end of the war in 1919 to go across europe and set up a french vogue so he has now become the first interNational Magazine publisher in the world. The staff writers, just going to show a few pictures because that is what magazines are all about. s number one photographer on the left here, in 1915 after he lost the first battle, after hearst lost the first battle with conde nast he decided he was going to coach, it was a loss but only for ten minutes because george replaced him. And it was george who took the first pictures of movement. He was followed by edward steak and and cecil beaten later on and there was the discovery of the model turned photographer lee miller. Lee miller was vogues war photographer during the second world war. We will come to her pictures in a minute. This is an example of the type of picture meyer took. It is merry pickfords Wedding Dress to Douglas Fairbanks senior and it was conde nasts daughter who is modeling it, so small nobody but a child could fit into it. This is a lady called grace more, the next soprano. She became conde nasts mistress by 1919 when his marriage to clarice finally broke up. It is one of the pictures that shows they are starting to play with shadows and light in a way that is more akin to what we are used to today but he created these photographs. Here you have Gloria Swanson and charlie chaplin, adele and fred astaire, noel coward who conde nast saved from starvation giving him his first 10 bucks when he came to america in the 1920s, greta garbo, this is cecil beatens specialty. He used to make, and managed to change into somebody who was quite beautiful. Cecil beaten was friendly with british aristocracy. When it came time for the abdication of edward viii to Edward Wallis simpson it was beaten who took pictures of her trousseau. And also happens to be a conde nast employee. The only pictures to appear in vogue were taken by lee miller and on the left is a picture of lee in hitlers bath. On the right is what happened when she walked into one of the huts. I mentioned he hired lots of writers, lots of everything. F scott fitzgerald, and jack dempsey. All these people wrote for him. Something special to give to the reader. The artists were incredible. At abelard bonito, and carl erickson, light touches. I always get his name on. And from vogue in particular you never doubted when any picture was trying to sell you so here we have sandals, Marlena Dietrich who is modeling a hat, more hats. If you want to buy any kind of cosmetics you have to have the gold compact and jewelry to go with it and the covers, it was not unusual to see black people in the covers of vogue in the 1930s. You know what every issue is going to sell you. And there was a fresh face to vogue, carmel snow as she became and a complete breath of fresh air, completely untrained like ed the had been in the beginning, her only claim to fame working for William Randolph hearst, little did conde nast know in several years hence that cornells husband was in support and into the idea that they could do anything and go anywhere and be anything so it became more exhaustive. You had women who were writing camels, shooting, going skiing, voting and doing all kinds of activities but never forgot his core business which was selling clothing fashion 2 women. You can look at the cover and now they are trying to sell me jewelry. Here we have the beginning of the new york season. Everything was done with a purpose so the customer and the reader knew what they were getting, the advertiser knew they were doing something that meant something. Meanwhile, conde nasts friendship blossomed. They were like brothers. A lot of rumors they were gay. I dont know about frank one way or the other but one of the editors at vanity fair for a brief time believed he was a eunuch. I prefer to call him a confirmed bachelor. Conde nast on the other hand loved women it was always seen with a pretty woman on his arm after he and clarice split up. It took many years for her to agree to a divorce, that is for something in the future. In the meantime, a curious move to 1000 park ave. Their daughter became hostess of many of conde nasts famous parties. The person who decorated the apartment. That is where the most famous cafes parties took place. Think of mrs. Astor dancing with groucho marx. I cant imagine groucho marx dancing. That is the sort of thing, anybody who was in the news. Anyone who was a trendsetter was invited to the party. Frequently they didnt know conde nast to begin with. That was the case with charles lindbergh. He returned from his solo flight over france and conde nast decided to throw party in his honor. He was mobbed but he came. They ended up having to rescue him but that is another story. This is the famous apartment, frequently a backdrop in vanity fair. I apologize for the quality of the pictures. These are pictures of pictures in the family albums but it gives you an idea of what it was like. On the righthand side you have a ballroom in these are actual shops that. In various vogue or vanity fair magazines. Guess what happens. In 1925 a guy named harold ross comes up with something called the new yorker. They get worried about vanity fair, they decided to work with harold ross. When they say conde nast was the first to think of many things, a pioneer in technologies and he has a printing plant in the United States in greenwich, connecticut, at conde nasts Printing Press and it was a very successful relationship for many years. Only once the newhouses about the new yorker that the two magazines were part of the Conde Nast Publications. As you can see they have very stylish this is nateka when she was a hostess and remained for conde nast. She introduced him to this man on the right. A White Russian who had come over to the states, started out as a runner on wall street, very fashionable, very debonair and nateka said you will of this man, he is just like you. Wisely just like me . He thinks in numbers. He sees numbers as pictures. He understands how important it is to have a Balance Sheet that works, to have all of the covers that were, to understand what covers are attracting people, which ones dont attract people, i promise you he is a great guy. They met, they liked each other but he is thinking about something else. He had fallen in love with a woman the same age as his daughter. Leslie foster. The picture on the lower right is leslie who is facing us and that is nateka talking to her. He was afraid people would make fun of them, she was afraid people would make fun of them. They were a real generation apart but at the end of the day they truly truly love each other and got married right before the crash. This is a picture of them on honeymoon. He was so nervous he invited all his children to join them on honeymoon. He agreed to hire patsayvich, he needed some who can take over, a really bad shot, i apologize. That is the house they bought together, that is the sunroom that overlooks the sound and in the first year, to her daughter, one of the main people who helped me on this book. These two sly guys look like bankers, they are. The chap on the left, you may have heard of him. The chap on the right, harrison williams, the largest Power Generation company in the United States, catchings was the chairman of Goldman Sachs and to together they decided in 1928 that they were going to start telling people whose companies they wanted to acquire once the crash came that they should load themselves up with debt. One thing conde nast always believed in his let the experts advise you and at the end of the day it is your decision but you have to trust the experts at these men were his friends and trusted them and they loaded him up with too much debt so when the crash came conde nast was worthless and Conde Nast Publications, tried to get out of the company. They might have succeeded if not for edna chase. They wanted to make her in charge of the company and she said not only would she not take the job but would quit and make sure all the staff quit as well so conde nast was left in place and found someone to help them without the debt. Fortunately these guys overreached themselves and they were taken over by floyd odom who basically put the Conde Nast Publications on a level footing but said i will sell to anybody who wants to buy this so i can make a profit. By now conde nast is really getting upset, he approached joe kennedy to buy it and hurst publications also in trouble and joe said no. He asked bernard baruch, he said no. Everybody in america said no and at the same time, little caramel snow decides to defect to harbors bizarre which of course was a terrible blow to conde nast and he never for gave her, never. She is the only person who did him wrong who he never for gave but as you can see there is a very famous new yorker, Diana Friedman at Harpers Bazaar talking to carmel snow. Carmels brother is general manager of all the First Companies and he is one of seven people bailing out hurst at the same time. If that werent bad enough he gets Prostate Cancer and has a heart attack, he has a radical prostatectomy, hard word to say. I will get to that slide. Basically is in such poor health he doesnt know what he is going to do and this lady at a Cocktail Party, he is married to leslie and trying to decide if hes prepared to ruin this young womans life. And this lady comes into his life, anybody know who she is cute you claire bruce brokaw and conde nast met her at a Cocktail Party is really the case, and she goes to meet mrs. Chase. Mrs. Chase says i am off to europe for the summer, come back in september and i will see if i can hire you. Claire being claire did the most amazing thing i have ever seen ever. She decided since conde nast was away and edna was away, she would as she put it, use her way into vogue. What does that mean . She reported to work and claimed she was the new girl and actually, there was stuff on her desk and she started working, too late to fire her. She went from that to being the managing director of vanity fair. There were lots of rumors that conde nast was enamored with her and everything else. Frankly that is a lot of hokum and she wouldnt have married conde nast anyway. Conde nast decides painfully to tell his wife leslie she has to marry somebody else and he had arranged to meet this gentleman who was a banker in england and they did fall in love and get married but as rexs children said to me leslie and conde nast remain in devoted to each other for the rest of his life. Had two Children Together and they were very happy. Conde nast kept little leslie in new york to go to an american school, obviously very difficult for big leslie to keep leslie in england at the time. Meanwhile claire decides she is going to marry henry luce. The picture on the left was taken only four months before the picture on the right. It was not a happy unit. I just put this in for the fun of it, a breath of fresh air. And where does she find them . Conde nast in 1934 finally finds somebody who will bail him out and buy Conde Nast Publications. A gentleman in england called William Barry owned a variety of womens magazines and at the time the daily telegraph, the deal they did was a handshake deal. Nobody was to no cameras had bailed him out and conde nast stayed in charge of all his magazines. I dont know anywhere today that that would happen and so by 1936, 32, 34, 35, she was a staunch republican and she decides as the election is coming up she is going to start lampooning fdr because his new deal is a terrible thing and fdr is a horrible man. That didnt play very well. Fdr was popular with the people so vanity fair subscriptions, people are not buying it on the news stand and this continued through 1936 election. Finally what happened, claire left when she married henry luce and Helen Brown Norton took over very briefly as managing director. Conde nast had a brief affair with her. She wrote about him in her book a stranger at the party, but would have been very upset to find out she was publicizing their sex life, a very quiet, very shy man who didnt want his private life to be talked about in public. This is the last issue of vanity fair in 1936. Helen brown norton became Helen Lorenzen and she went on to write a lot for esquire it became a biographer for claire as well. Vanity fair into vogue, frank and conde nast were both broken. It was their love affair with new york that created vanity fair and they were so upset, they were never going to be the same. One of the things vanity fair got wrong was decided to talk about mussolini and hitler but their predictions for what they were going to be doing to europe and the world, hitler invades the west in 1939 and by june 1940 they have taken over paris. Conde nast is now an old man in many ways. His heart has been broken by the strain of trying to save his company. He has had several heart attacks he kept secret, he kept secret his prostate condition. Nobody knew anything except only his secretary, his daughter and his butler. That was it. Now he is faced with a situation where all the people he hired in france, many were close friends, were now in danger and brought as many of them to safety as he could. On the righthand side he brought over michelle, the editor at vogue, on the left, the fashion editor at vogue, put into concentration camp but did survive the war. Her husband was put into a different concentration camp and did not. Theres a lot in the book about how conde nast desperately tried to save people, spend any cash he had sending care packages to the british as well including at that point to his former wife. Conde nast dies in september 1942 of Heart Failure essentially, there is a very touching story that edna wrote about the last days within which i include in the book. He died virtually without any money. His first wife on e. 72nd st. Which conde nast bought with her out right, worked for the benefit of the grandchildren, and he was always wonderful to her and very generous, they remained very good friends, frank was the only member of the vanity fair team who came out on top, sharing shares on the eve of september 8th before the stock market crash. All his personal effects up for auction and very sadly even the family were not allowed the smallest trinket. There it is. Ivan passe of each was named as chief executive of the magazine empire. He wanted to marry Marlena Dietrich. He is active in hollywood. He is pictured on the left with some of his good friends, david niven, james stewart, he eventually married lewis in 1963 and they stayed married and he was cut from the same cloth as conde nast. His word was his bond. When he hired people he felt were right for the job, had to realize to sell the magazine empire when William Barry died and he is given the opportunity, he opted for the new house family so of course a new era. Still in charge of conde nast, he brings forward Alex Lieberman to get back on the hearst empire, Diana Friedman. They look very happy. This picture characterizes their relationship a lot better. They didnt get on. She left and after her we have tina brown who came ineffectively to resurrect vanity fair in 1984 and she did great job until 1992. The lady on the right needs no introduction to new york even though she is british or partially british. The one who made vanity fair sing every song is used to sing was great and carter. He again made vanity fair what it had been originally. It wasnt that you would invite stars to a Vanity Fair Party but the stars had to be at the Vanity Fair Party at the oscars where they werent stars. It was a big difference and anybody who read vanity fair was allowed to go into that world and he didnt only have movie stars, they wrote a fabulous article about what i wrote about, they did what i would call important journalism in many different ways. Essentially here we have their 100th anniversary issue, never mind the 50 years it wasnt in publication but that is what vanity fair was all about and Conde Nast Conde Nast was a very shy man from modest beginnings who brought Business Ethics to america, americas can do attitude to europe and europeanstyle to new york. [applause] ladies and gentlemen, please wait for the microphone to be passed to you. Speak directly into the microphone. Somebody must have a question. Gentleman here. Who currently has the apartment at 1040 who currently has the house on long island in the apartment at 1040 park . I asked leslie who owns the house now and she didnt know but i can tell you what happened to 1040. It is a sad story. It was a 32 room, duplex apartment with an enclosed balcony all the way around, magnificent. It could not be sold. It was eventually after five years, more than that, 1948 it was subdivided into three separate apartments and no longer duplex. Nateka went there with her daughter to paint because it had fantastic light in it and her daughter used to dancer ballet on the dance floor. That was also in the book but unfortunately it didnt remain. A pity. Thank you. There are two beautiful Granite Stone pillars where i assume the printing plant was. Who owns those pillars . The town of greenwich . I believe the town of greenwich asked to remain in place and they have taken over the care and maintenance. The printing plant which was the most extraordinary summer place, 400 acres had been scrubland and they turned it into the most beautiful park and they were printing for 25 of americas most important magazines at the time. It was sold after the new house was bought, and i am pleased that it was after conde nasts life because it would have been a tremendous sadness to him, probably would have killed him if vanity fair hadnt gone a long way towards that already. The town of greenwich owns them. They are very beautiful when they are maintained. They are gorgeous. What is one of the stories you heard that most surprised you in your research for the book . I think it was the story about leslie and conde nast and why they decided to divorce. I had a bizarre connection with the benson side of the family. My husband worked for many years with benson as a banker. We gave up Investment Banking in 2005. I knew about him and he was quite a swashbuckling character. Unfortunately what was so good is leslies halfbrothers, robin and david, gave me access to their fathers diary about when he met leslie and how he was afraid that he was falling in love with a married woman and she was afraid she might be falling in love with him but they hadnt realized that conde nast to meet him on purpose. If you love somebody a lot you have to be willing to let them go and conde nasts case he not only was willing to let her go but he felt that that was the only way she could have a life. He was afraid she had married an old man, they loved each other but frankly it wasnt a good life for her. She needed to have a different life and it was his selflessness on top of the fact, a terribly ethical person made me say i wish i had known him. So few people were around, but meeting his children and his grandchildren and greatgrandchildren has been my solace i suppose. This lady here in the front. Can you please stand . Tell us more about what they are doing with conde nast . Did everybody here the question . She asked if i could talk about the new houses and what they are doing with conde nast. The short answer is no. Simply because when i was being vetted by conde nast as to whether i was a fit person to go into their archives they asked me one question. Who are you writing about . I said conde nast. Are you going to write about anybody who is living . At the time, newhouse was still alive. Now, i like writing about dead people. I specifically stayed away from the newhouses, obviously because people didnt just want people to end with the sadness of conde nast dying. It was important to understand the empire that donned. There are enough a lot of changes at conde nast and all the newhouse publications, the world is spinning at such a rate that print magazines are difficult for people to make any kind of a profit on but when you are a privately held company like advanced publications it is very difficult for anybody outside to understand. There were lots of rumors around carter quitting when he did. There have been huge changes in personnel. What they are trying to do is make it profitable. And keep the magazines in print. Whether they will succeed i dont know. It is a be will during world in the media right now, if conde nast were alive today he would be beside himself. Does that help . And last question. At the peak of this empire what was the publication, what were the publication numbers in terms of readership . At the peak of the empire it was probably around 5 million but you have to understand that in that 5 million youve got offices that have them on their tables in the waiting room and doctors offices, you would probably multiply that by five. Okay . Thank you. Thank you, everybody. [applause] [ [inaudible conversations] fascinating insight into conde nast the man, absolutely engrossing. I feel like we were emerged in cafe society. Thank you so much for that. On the occasion like this we would like to make a presentation to you and to do so is our executive director. So thoughtfully put together, we cant wait to read the book and really loved your characters so on behalf of the mechanics and tradesmen of the city of new york founded 1785 we express our gratitude to the susan ronald, author of conde nast the man and his empirea biography for her participation in the literature and landmark lecture series. [applause] we could already tell there was another book inside of you. A lifetime member to our library, 1785, we also have New York Times bestsellers. I am sure you will find something. Since you say that the next book, i have gone back to the dark side, sorry. It is called the ambassador and it is about Joseph P Kennedy as ambassador to britain, 19381940. We look forward to it. Thank you. I want to thank you all for coming this evening. This book is for sale and susan ronald is happy to autograph it and join us for the glass of wine and im sure susan will answer more questions. Thank you for coming this evening. [applause]