i am karen taylor, program director of the general society . the labor, literature and landmark collections are supported in part by public funds from the new city department of cultural affairs in partnership with the city council. for those of you who may be 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 234-year-old 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 tonight's 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 year's 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 you've 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 i'm sure susan would be happy to find the book for you. i also want to mention that c-span 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 who's 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, hitler's art thief. heretic creek queen, the pirate queen and shakespeare's 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. i've decided to write about conde nast really because i tend to write about power and greed. all the people i've written about before, there's another book which isn't 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 i'm going to write a book about one of the most powerful people at the turn-of-the-century and going into world war ii, conde nast. a lot of you know all the various magazines but they weren't all there at the beginning and i'd 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 don't 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 doesn't 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 it's 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 father's 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 didn't 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 didn't 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 nast's 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 therefore she decided she would only send conde to georgetownuniversity . louis never spoke to his brother again. so here's here he is as he graduated, a handsome young man. his best friend at college was bob collier. and bob was of course the air to the collier library. he went off on for a year to europe, to england, to oxford. came back and his father said i'm going to give you collier's weekly because it's failing. they only had something like $1000 worth of advertising at the time that he gave the weekly over to bob. and bob had done a lot of work with conde at various clubs at georgetown and he went down to st. louis and talked conde into accepting a $12 aweek job with him . which he did, considering he was a man of the family at that point and fortunately his father had died so he was no longer a drain on the family and the two of them worked together very happily indeed for about 15 years. now, bob collier pictured at left here was an innovator. and he thought about making colliers less of a generalized magazine but with conde pushing him and saying we can sell advertising if we decide that we're going to create special issues. so you saw before that the other picture that i just showed you was a remington issue, frederic remington's arts, this was the issue that started the gibson girls going in terms of colliers magazine. he overpaid gibson by the way double what he would normally get at ladies home journal so he could have him exclusively for a period of 2 years and that was something conde learned about as well area and collier was also very into navigation. his great friend was orville wright on the right here and together with conde they set up the first ever national newspaper, not newspaper. national magazine company that had its own sales network in every major city across america. conde understood that to some magazines you had to make sure that your customer wanted to read the ads that were in it firstof all . your advertiser had to feel he wasn't wasting his money advertising and also you were something calledethical in what you sold . this was the area of quack medicines, almost every newspaper on this to give you something special to cure. i don't think i really want to have any walk-throughs, i don't know about you but i think that's pretty bad but this product called runa aimed that it could cure absolutely anything . so colliers joined with believe it or not ladies home journal to set stop quack medicine advertising they believed it was killing americans . this is just a few other of the ads at the time. you canhave your diabetes readily cured . which to the urbain pest we will strengthen your system, as ways your thirst and decreases your sugar and prevents diabetic shock. wonderful. we won't go into doctor bennett's products , will we you wouldn't believe it but cw post who founded post cereals was another one of the people who was selling his cerealsas a medicine . there's, here's to another year and years and years of steady nerves, clear brains andvigorous health . bob collier was kind of spurred on byconde and decided he was going to sue old cw . and he did and he won. so he learned a great deal from his relationship with bob . not only that but bob introduced him to his first wife clarence today are, i don't know if any of you remember the legal firm called to their brothers. but the family came across to america at the behest of the marquis de lafayette. george washington's friend. they established themselves as international lawyers in the early 19th century and larry's was part of new york's 400. conde was by now a wealthy man by 1902 when he married her. he was earning about $40,000 a year. the only person inamerica earning more at that time was theodore roosevelt as president . he earned 50,000. so she decided that she loved bob collier but bob collier didn't love her so conde was a good second from her point of view. he wasn't after her money. he understood that she held the whip hand as far as society was concerned area and the only problem is conde understood society was changing, women were changing . they wanted to become independent, and wanted the vote. they wanted her thoughts to be recognized and while certainly queries felt that was for her to, she didn't 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, coudert who was the son first and the peak of the daughter, she decided she was going to go off to paris and become a soprano of course, she would because her three sisters lived there as well. one of them had been supporting artist august rodin as his moneymaker, basically for the previous 20 years. now, that isn't very good for a marriage, obviously. conde decided 1904 that he was going to set up on his own, yes bob was paying him more money and he was worth area there was no doubt about it. 40,000 a year in those days was close on $1 million.but essentially he decided he was going to take a plunge into women's fashion. and you'd say why women's fashion ? here he is at a national magazine. they're starting to gointo the niche markets . conde decided women's fashion was going to be key to the changing role of women. until now women's fashion in terms of the clothing that would be put into patterns had two distinct shortcomings. the first of course was that all patterns were giveaways alongside fabrics. the second which was even more incredible was the fact that there was a new women's size. and conde decided that no woman as many sizes. i'm going to empower her. i'm going to empower women without money to make their own clothing in all the sizes that they come in and that they should, they should discard their course it's, enjoy life and be women. and of course he was right. and he ended up allowing ladies home journal to own label his home patterns so home patterned company was his first company. still working for bob collier butdue to a number of circumstances, he ended up leaving in 1906 . 1907, that was the first time he tried to buy vote he failed. he went across the europe at that point rescue his two children from paris and his wife, she decided that she wanted to stay on. and though they went across, the children and the nurse made. clarice decided she would come home to, but then in 1909 he bought vote. and larry's disappeared again for six months. nobody in the family knows why but she did. he was lucky enough to buy vote. sadly because it's owner time , i called arthur turner who was part of grolier's which was a big club at the time for publishers, he had set it up. very early on in 1895. and he had hired on a lady at that point as a male clerk. on the left, her name is edna chase. by the time you see her on the right, she had been that editor of vogue, editor-in-chief of vogue for over 50 years. conde kept her on obviously. it was turner's sister who have been the actual editor at the time that he bought it and she basically left due to a disagreement over money. 1912 he decided on buying two more magazines and put them into one, something called house and garden, a few of you have heard of that one to now he has home patterned, vogue, house and garden early 1912. by 1914 he decides he's really like to set up an international magazine empire dedicated to women and women's fashion and unfortunately there's something called world war i which began in 1914, for america it began in 1917. edna chase comes up to conde and says i've got this wonderful idea. i know where cut off from french fashion and british fashion but why don't we have something called a charity fashion show and it will get all the new york 400 involved and conde was skeptical. he said it smacks of trade. if clary's doesn't like working can you imagine these women working? she said give me a chance and of course she made it a success.she went to mrs. stein vincent fish and was able to talk her into creating this fashion show. maybe phoned miss after and it was a done deal and the only problem was it was arranged to be at the ritz carlton. the only problem with all the models for all the fashions previously were tied to various fashion houses in europe, not in america but miss astor and mrs. fish were able to cobble together a very interesting show of new york fashion. don't laugh. here it is. the new york city public library is 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 what generally conde was making close in different sizes is not all of them were models, were they? there's more of these apparently at the new york city library and i thought it would be interesting to see. anyway, this upset another gentleman called william randolph first who had just bought harper's bazaar and he said set his people out to badmouth boat and conde people who wanted to get rid of european fashion not imported to america anymore and they were only out to support new york clothing designers, etc. well, what happened was the representative arrived in paris during the war, was a big fat check for the seamstresses who'd been put out of work. so first lost the first round , but he wasn't going to get up. we all know he never did that . come 1915, two things happened. the most important one was a lunch with the gentlemanwho founded the coffeehouse in this building . frankwrote in shield . was a great aficionado of modern art. he was everybody's favorite raconteur. he had miles and acres of friends throughout new york city and conde had lunch with him, probably at the coffeehouse. i don't know where exactly and he said i've got a problem. i bought two magazines called dress and vanity fair.i've tried to edit them myself that i'm a publisher, i'm not an editor and what do you think i'mgetting wrong . frank said it's very simple. you have to make it visible. you have to be a cocktail party where every time somebody turns the page, they're actually joining you in a conversation. their understanding what it is that everybody in society or everybody who we read about is thinking about. and so he decided to hire frank on as the editor for vanity fair. on a handshake. he did his best deals on a handshake. they had one competitor at the time, hl megan was the editor and it was the smart set where they said one civilizedreader is worth 1000 boneheads . well, smart set eventually went out of business, but they had a very friendly rivalry between them and as a matter fact, george the megan would work at the smart set ended up working at vanity fair after it closed . , they believed in hiring the best people. no matter what. it didn't matter whether they were gay, lesbian, jewish, catholic. whatever. it didn't matter. what mattered was talent. it didn't matter if they were known . so he hired a girl called dorothy ross to write captions vogue. the one that cost frank frank crowninshield's life was brevity is the soul of monterey. she kept dropping little poems on frank's desk to try to transfer over fromlittle old vogue into vanity fair . finally he agreed to take her on. he then also wanted to take on somebody to make the vanity fair articles more substantial so he brought on the chap in the middle, i called robert benchley who was actually one of the funniest people i've ever read about and i've read his own biography and it's absolutely hysterical but robert benchley was a harvard graduate. he had been the editor at the harvard lampoon. and he got the job because it was going to get old very serious. i opened the book with one of the incidents that happened while they were working there. eventually by the way went on to win an oscar or a short was produced by mgm area called how to sleep. and it's hysterically funny. if you can ever get a hold of it. dorothy of course would eventually go on to other things, but the third person in the picture is a gentleman called robert sherwood was about six foot eight. he was fresh out of the army and 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. even gas, been shot in the leg and as dorothy would say, the sky was enormous area sherwood would go on to win for pulitzer prizes and become a speechwriter for fdr. so these were all unknowns. but they all misbehaved tremendously. and of course ended up getting fired. it was all basically because dorothy decided as theater critic right now that she was going to go after broadway producers and she ended up libeling them and so he really had no choice. conde didn't want to fire her , but knew she had to go and it was for frank who had to do it. so during the war, he sets up british vogue the cause he can't exportpaper from america, believe it or not during world war i . and decides at the end of the war in 1919 and he's going to go across to europe and set up a french vogue but is now become the first international magazine publisher in the world. now, we talked about a few of the staff writers and i'm just going to show you a few pictures because of course that's what magazinesare all about . his number one photographer was aldous neumeier. it was in 1915 after he lost the firstbattle , after her lost the first battle with conde nast that he decided he was going to poach demeo. it was a loss but only for about 10 minutes because george hurley, that's how he pronounced his name replaced him and it was george who took the firstpictures of movement . he was followed by edward second and of course cecily can relate on. and then there was the discovery of the model turned photographer lena. lee miller actually was vogue's work photographer during the second world war. will come back onto her pictures in a minute . so this is an example of the type of picture that got almost a minute. it's nice, actually mary pickford's wedding to douglas fairbanks senior. and it's the daughter and that thewhose modeling it . it was apparently so small nobody but a child could fit into it . this is a lady called grace more who was done soprano. she also became conde's mistress by 1919 when his marriage to clary's broke up. the picture is one of his pictures and it shows that now they're starting to play with shadows and light in a way that is more akin to what we are used to today what psyche is the one who created the celebrity photograph. here we have gloria swanson and charlie chaplin. a dell and fred astaire. noel coward, by the way conde saved from starvation, giving him his first 10 bucks when he came to america in the 1920s. read garbo. this is vessel begins specialty. he used it of a certain weight thing. and here's how he managed to change helena rubenstein from a rather portly lady into somebody was quite beautiful. but then again, beacon was also friendly with british aristocracy and when it came time for the abdication of edward viii two mary wallis simpson it was beacon who took the pictures of her trousseau and the trousseau was made by the designer may bother who happened to be a conde nast employee. the only ugly pictures to ever appear in vogue were these taken by lee miller and that's on the left a picture of lee in on the right is what happened when she walked into one of the huts at dachau. i mentioned that he hired lots of people, lots of writers, lots of everything. people as diverse as scott fitzgerald, pg woodhouse and believe it or not dempsey. all these people wrote for him. so what mattered was that i diversity, the fact that people had something special to give to the reader. the artists were incredible. this is benito, and were no benny to go, one of his famous covers. here we have carl erickson with one of his more beautiful, just very light touches for one of his models that he drew. now i'm going to say, miguel, i always get his name wrong but you know what i mean. he did some of the more fanciful vogue covers. the other thing that happened with the photography in vogue in particular was that you never doubted what anypicture was trying to sell you . but here we have sandals, hats. we also have marlena dietrich whose modeling a hat. more hats. if you want to buy any kind of cosmetics, you of course have to have the gold compact and your jewelry to go with it . and the covers. it was not unusual to see black people on the covers of vogue in the 1930s. you always knew what every issue is going to sell you. and then there came a fresh face, carnell white as she was at the time, carnell snow as she became when she married pam snow who was one of the 400. she was a complete breath of fresh air, completely undertrained just like and i had been in the beginning . her only claim to fame washer brother work for william rendell first . little did conde know it would mean something several years hence carnell's husband was very much into sports and she was into the idea that women could do anything, go anywhere and be anythingand so the covers became more exotic . you had women who were actually doing sports, riding camels who were shooting, going skiing. who were boating, doing all kinds of activities. but he never forgot his core business which was selling clothing and fashion to women so you could look at the cover and you know they're tryingto sell me jewelry . here we have the beginning of the paris season, the beginning of the new york season. everything was done with a purpose so that the customer and reader always knew what they were getting. the advertiser always knew that they were advertising in an issue that meant nothingto the people . and meanwhile conde's friendship with frank crowninshield blossomed. they were really like brothers. there were a lot of rumors they were gay. i don't know about frank one way or the other. i know edmund wilson was one of the editors at vanity fair for a brief period of time believed he was a unit. i prefer to call him a confirmed bachelor but conde on the other hand loved women and was always seen with a pretty woman on his arm after he and clary spread up. it took many years for her to agree to a divorce. but that's for something in the future. in the meantime, in the 1920s , clarence moved to 1000 park avenue. their daughter nitika became hostess at many of conde's parties and conde moved to 1040 part and elsie gould is the person who decorated the apartment. that's where the most famous cafc society parties took place. i'd like to say think of mister astor dancing with groucho marx. i can't imagine groucho marx dancing but that's the sort of thing anybody who was in the news, anybody who was a trendsetter was allowed into the party or invited to the party. frequently they didn't know conde to begin with. that was the case with charles lindbergh. he just returned from his solo flight to france and conde decided to throw a party in his honor . he was mobbed but he came. nitika and not having to rescue him but that's a whole other story. this is the famous apartment, frequently a backdrop in vanity fair and vogue . i apologize for the quality of pictures, these are pictures of pictures in the family albums but it gives you an idea of what it was like . on the right-hand side you've got the ballroom and these were actual shot that appeared in various vogue or vanity fair magazines. and guess what happens? suddenly in 1925 harold ross decides to come up with something called the new yorker so they get worried about vanity fair but it turns out they've decided to work with harold ross. when i say conde was the first to think of a lot of things, he was a pioneer in all new technologies and he has the best printing plant the entire united states in greenwich connecticut and they did a deal with the new yorker to print the new yorker at conde's printing plant and basically it was a very successful relationship for many years. it was only once the new house was bought, the new yorker that the two magazines were part of the conde nast publications so as you can see, they also have stylish artists and this is nitika in 1928, 28, 29 when she was still a hostess for conde. she introduced him to this man on the right, a man called patsy mitch who was a white russian who had come over to the states. hestarted out as a runner on wall street . was always very fashionable, very debonair and nitika insisted with her father you will love this man. he's just like you and he said why is he just like me ? she said he thinks and 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 at work, to understand what covers are attracting people, which ones don't attract people and i promise you dad, he's a great guy. he met, they like each other but he wasthinking about something else . he had fallen in love with a woman the same age as his daughter . leslie foster. now, the picture on the lower right is leslie who's facing us and that isnifty got talking to her . he was afraid people would make fun ofthem. 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 loved each other and got married right before the crash . this is a picture of them on honeymoon. as a matter fact he was so nervous that he invited allof his children to join them on honeymoon and also petrovich . so he agreed to hire him cause he was thinking in terms of the future. i need somebody who is reliable, who can take over for me . sorry about this, this is a bad shot, i apologize. that's the house they bought together on long island at sands point. that's the sunroom that overlooks the sound. and within the first year, leslie gave birth to her daughter little leslie was one of the main people who helped me on this book. little leslie is 89 today. so these two sly guys here, they look like bankers, don't they ? they are. the chap on the left is catchings, some of you may have heard of him. the chapter on the right is harrison williams . arison williams owns the largest power generation company in the united states, catchings was the chairman of goldman sachs and 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 and one thing conde believed in his you go to the experts, let the experts advise you and at the end of the day it's your decision but you have to trust the experts and these men were his friends and he trusted them and they loaded him up too much debt so that when the crash came, conde was worthless and conde nast publications was taken over by them and they tried to get conde out of the company. he might have succeeded if it hadn't been for edna chase because they wanted to make her in charge of the company and she said not only would she not take the job that she would quit and she would make sure that all the staff would quit as well. so conde was left in place but he had to find somebody to help him out with debt. fortunately these guys overreached themselves and they were taken over by floyd odom who basically put conde nast publications back on more of level footing but he also said i will sell to anybody who wants to buy this so i can make a profit. by now conde's really getting up. he approached joe kennedy to buy it because he had offered to buy hers publications which were also in trouble and joe said no, he asked his friend bernard baroque. he said no. everybody inamerica said no . and at exactly the same time, good old carmel snow decides she's going to defect to harper's bazaar. each of course was a terrible blow to conde and he never forgave her never and she's the only person who did him wrong he never forgave but as you can see, there is a very famous new yorker diana freeman talking to carmel snow areas find out carmel's brother, tom life is general manager of all the hearst companies and he's one of seven people bailing out hearst at the same time. as if that weren't bad enough he gets prostate cancer has a heart attack. he has a radical prostatectomy, that's a hard word to say,i'm sorry. i'll get off that slide . and basically, is in such poor health he doesn't know what he's going to do . there's this lady who he meets at a cocktail party. he's still married to leslie but by now he's trying to decide if he's prepared to ruin this young woman's life and she wont be able to have anymore children with him. he's not quite sure what he's going to do a and this lady comes into hislife, anybody know who she is ? at the time she was claire booth brokaw. and conde met her at a cocktail party and he says go meet mrs. chase, she goes and meets mrs. chase. mrs. chase says i'm off to europe for thesummer . come back in september and i'll see if i can hire you. claire being claire did the most amazing thing i have ever seen . she decided as conde was away and since edna was away as she put it she would loseher way into vogue . what does that mean? she reported for work and claimed she was the new girl and suddenly there was stuff on her desk and she started working and by the time edna came back it was too late to fire her so she went from that to becoming managing director of vanity fair eventually, but all within three years. there were lots and lots of rumors that conde was enamored with her and he was going to leave his wife for her and everythingelse . frankly that's a lot of hokum and she wouldn't have married conde anyway. but conde decides very painfully to tell his wife leslie she has to go and marry somebody else. and he had arranged for her to meet this gentleman rex benson was a banker, lord benson in england and they did fall in love and they did get married but as rex children said to me, leslie and conde remain entirely devoted to each other for the rest of his life . they had two children together and of course they were very happy. conde leslie, little lesliein new york so she could go to an american school . obviously it was difficult for big leslie at they call her in the family to keep leslie in england at the time . meanwhile your claire decides she's going to marry henry luce. the picture on the left was taken only four months before thepicture on the right . it was not a happy union. i just put this in for the fun of it because dorothy parker was such a breath of fresh air. so yes, on hearing that claire booth was invariably kind to her, dorothy said where did shefind them . and meanwhile, conde about 1934 finally finds somebody who's going to bail him out and buy conde nast publications from odlum. he owned a variety of women's magazines and also at the time the daily telegraph and the deal they did was a handshake deal . nobody was to know. nobody was to know that cameron's had bailed him out and conde stayed in charge of all his magazines. i don't know anywhere today where that would happen . and so claire is now by 1936, 32, 34, 35, she's in charge of vanity fair and she was of course a staunch republican as some of you may recall. she decides that as the election is coming up in 32 she's going to start lampooning fdr because his new deal is aterrible thing and fdr is a horrible man . and that's didn't really play very well because naturally, fdr was very popular with the people. and so vanity fair subscriptions started to fall off. people weren't buying it as much on the newsstand. and this continued through 1936 elections. >> .. he was a very quiet, very shy man and he didn't want his private life to be talked about in public. this is the last issue of "vanity fair" in 1936, february. helen became helen lorenzen and she went on to write a lot for esquire and became a sort of biographer for claire as well. "vanity fair" was assumed into boat and frank and condé were both broken. it was their love affair with new york that created "vanity fair", and they were just so upset. they were never going to be the same. one of the other things "vanity fair" got wrong is it decided that it would talk about mussolini and hitler but their predictions for what they're going to be doing to europe and the world were entirely wrong. and, of course, hitler invades the west in 1939 and by june 1940 they had taken over paris. condé is now an old man in many ways. his heart has been broken by all the strain of trying to save his company. he said several heart attacks that he is kept secret. he kept secret is prostate condition. nobody knew anything except only his secretary, his daughter and his butler. that was it. so now he's faced with a situation where all of the people that he hired in france, many of whom were very close friends, were now in danger. he brought as many of them to safety as he could. on the right inside he brought over michelle, the editor at "vogue." there he is pictured after the war with miller. on the left was the fashion editor of "vogue" who was put into french concentration camp but did survive the war. her husband was put in in a different concentration camp did not. but there's a lot in the book about how condé desperately tried to say people, how we spent any cash that he had in sending care packages to the british as well, including at that point to his former wife. condé died september 1942 of heart failure essentially. there's a very touching story written about the last days which i do include in the book. he died virtually without any money. his first wife clarice had an apartment on east 72nd street which condé had bought for her outright. they worked together for the benefit of the grandchildren and he was always wonderful to her, very generous. he and leslie remained very good friends after his death. frank was the only member of the "vanity fair" team who came out on top. he sold his shares on the eve of literally i think september 8 right before the stock market crashed. here we have the furniture, all his personal effects up for auction, and very sadly even the family had to bid for the auction. they were not allowed the smallest trinket. now i've lost -- there it is. i did was named by condé as the new chief executive of the magazine empire. he wanted to marry arlena dietrich, she didn't want to. he was very active in hollywood. here he is pictured on the left with some of his good friends, david niven. you've got james stewart. he eventually married in 1963 and they stayed married, and he was cut from the same cloth as condé. his work was his bond here whenever he hired people who we felt were right for the job as opposed to famous, but he realized he had to sell the magazine empire when william berry died. he was given at the opportunity to find an american buyer, and he opted for the newhouse family. so of course the new era is still in charge of condé nast. he brings forward alex lieberman and, of course, they poached to get their own empire. here are the two of them looked very happy. this picture characterizes the relationship a lot better. [laughing] they didn't get on. she left. grace took over and, of course, after her we have tina brown who came in to effectively resurrect "vanity fair" in 1984 and she did a great job until 1992. of course the lady on the right needs no introduction to new york, even though she is british i think still, or partially british. but the one who really made "vanity fair" seeing every single song that used to sing was definitely carter. he again made "vanity fair" what it had been originally. in other words, it wasn't that you would invite stars to a "vanity fair" party at the oscars, is that the stars had to be at the "vanity fair" party at the oscars or they were not stars. that's a big difference and anybody who read "vanity fair" was allowed to go into that world. it didn't only of movie stars. they wrote a famous article about the girl at collection which is what i wrote about for hitler's art thief. they did what i would call important journalism in many different ways. essentially here we have their 100th issue, the 100th anniversary issue. that's what "vanity fair" was all about. and condé nast was a very shy man from very modest beginnings who actually brought business ethics to america. america's can-do attitude to europe, and european-style to new york. thank you. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, please wait for the microphone to be passed to you for your question so we can record it, and make sure to speak clearly and directly into the microphone. thank you. >> , on, somebody must have a question. oh, the gentleman here. >> who currently has the apartment at 1040 -- i'm sorry? who currently has the apartment at 1040 park, do do you know? >> i don't know. i asked leslie who actually owns the house now at sands point, and she didn't know. but i can tell you what happenen to 1040. it's a very sad story. it was a 32 room duplex apartment with an enclosed balcony all the way around, magnificent. it could not be sold. and it was eventually after about five years, actually more than that, 1948 it was subdivided back into three separate apartments and no longer duplex. nikita you to go there often with her daughter to paint because it had fantastic light in it and her daughter used to dance her ballet in the dance floor. that part is also in the book but, unfortunately, it didn't remain. a pity. >> that are two very beautiful, beautiful granite stone pillars where i assume the printing plant was. >> yes. >> who owns those pillars? >> i believe that the town of greenwich has asked for them to remain in place and then taken over the care and maintenance. essentially the printing plant which was the most extraordinary place, there were i think 400 acres originally that had been scrubland and they turned it into the beautiful part. they were printing for about 25 of america's most important magazines at the time. it was sold after the new houses bought condé nast publication. i'm pleased that was after condé's like because it would've been a tremendous sadness to him, you know. it probably would have killed him if "vanity fair" had not gone a long way towards that already but i'm almost certain it's the town of greenwich that owns them. >> thank you. they are very beautiful and they are maintained. >> they are gorgeous, yes. >> is one of the stories you've heard that most surprised you in your research for the book? >> i think that it was the story about leslie and condé, and why they decided to divorce. i had a bizarre connection with the been since, the benson site of the family. my husband worked for benson as a banker. we gave up investment banking in 2005, okay, so we were not part of the bad stuff. anyway, i knew about it and he knew that he was quite a swashbuckling character. unfortunately, what was so good is that leslie is half-brothers, robin and david, gave me access to their fathers diary about when he had 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 had not actually realized that condé had -- said her to england to meet him on purpose. they always say if you love somebody a lot, you have to be willing to let them go. in condé's case he not only was willing to let her go but he felt that was here on the way she have a life. he was afraid she had married an old man. yes, they left each other but frankly it wasn't a good life for her. she knew to have different life and it was his selflessness on top of the fact that he was just terribly ethical person, that may be say i wish i had known him. there are so few people around like that it would've been lovely to actually have betty. but meeting his children and his grandchildren and great-grandchildren has been my solace, i suppose. thank you. this lady in the front. >> can you tell us a little bit more about the new houses what they're doing? >> did everybody here the question? she asked the like those old bt more about the newhouses. the short answer is no. simple because when i was being vetted by condé nast, as to whether or not i was a fit person to go into the archives, they asked me one question, who are you writing about? and i said condé nast. are you going to be writing ever anybody who is living? and at the time new house was still alive. i said no, i like writing about dead people. so i specifically stayed away from the newhouses. obviously because i think people didn't want to just have the story end with the sadness of condé dying. it was important to understand in the book the empire lived on. there are an awful lot of changes at condé nast and all the new house publications. obviously, the world is spinning at such a rate right now that print magazines are difficult for people to make any kind of profit. but when you are a privately held company like advanced publications is, it's very difficult for anybody outside to understand. there were lots of rumors around carter quitting when you did. there have been huge changes in personnel. i think what they're trying to do is very simply make it profitable and keep all of the magazines in print as well as online. whether they will succeed i don't know. i think if condé were alive today he would be totally beside himself. okay? does that help? okay, good. >> last question. >> at the peak of his empire, what was the publication, in terms of readership and buying? >> at the peak of the empire it was probably around 5 million. but you have to understand that in that 5 million you've got offices that had them out on their tables when people were in the waiting rooms and doctors offices and what have you. you would probably multiply that by five. okay. thank you. thank you, everybody. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> on an occasion like this we would like to make a presentation to you, and to do so is our executive director, victoria dengel. >> thank you. >> and i join also in saint it was so thoughtfully put together, and we all can't wait to read the book, and thank you for your very thorough research and for really we could tell you really loved your characters. our behalf of the society, we express our gratitude to susan ronald, author of condé nast for her participation in the general society, labor, literature and landmark lecture series. so on behalf of the society, thank you. [applause] >> we could already tell there's another book inside of you. we have major lifetime member to our library is our task aback to 785 and we also "new york times" bestseller so i'm sure you'll find something. come back. [laughing] >> since you said that the next book is what somebody else who's also in america. i have gone back to the dark side. sorry. it's called the ambassador and it's about joseph p kennedy as ambassador to britain, 1938- 1938-1940. >> we look forward to it. >> thank you. [applause] >> i want to thank you all for coming to cd. i want to remind you that this book is for sale, and susan would be happy to autograph it and hope you also join us now for a glass of white and i'm sure susan will be happy to answer more questions. thank you so much for coming this evening. [applause] >> you are watching booktv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers. >> thank you, guys so much for coming to kramerbooks. i am the been spent to him. i'm honored introduce our author bruce riedel director of intelligence project and a senior fellow and center for middle east studies. his book, "beirut 1958: how america's wars in the middle east began" is a nonfiction a thriller that provides a kashi tale for today. he combined real-world policy experice

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