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

"“You never know when you’re in a golden age,” Graydon Carter writes. “You only realize it was a golden age when it’s gone.” Carter is a larger-than-life figure from the magazine world’s golden age, but he can be self-deprecating: He describes himself as a “beta male” even during the time he helmed Vanity Fair, at the height of his influence. For me – someone who’s devoured magazines all my life and came of age as a reporter at Time, where Carter got his start – this memoir was essential reading of the most joyful sort, with its evocation of a more abundant, irreverent and freewheeling journalistic time. “I simply love being an editor,” Carter writes. I simply love his book."