Empire of the Elite

De: Michael M. Grynbaum

Narrado por: Jacques Roy, Michael M. Grynbaum

From a New York Times media correspondent, a dishy history of the Condé Nast magazine empire, home of Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and more, focusing on its glitzy heyday from the 1980s through the 2000s.

For decades, Condé Nast and its glittering magazines defined how to live the good life in America. The brilliant, complicated, striving characters behind Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, GQ, Architectural Digest, and many other titles manufactured a vision of luxury and sophistication that shaped consumer habits, cultural trends, intellectual attitudes, and political beliefs the world over. Condé’s billionaire owner Si Newhouse and his stable of star editors, photographers, and writers were the gatekeepers who decided what and who mattered, and they offered those opinions to tens of millions of readers every month. They were the ultimate influencers—before social media changed everything. The magazines crowned celebrities by the dozens, patronized creative talent much as the Medicis had underwritten Renaissance artists, and supercharged opulent events like the Vanity Fair Oscar Party and the Met Gala, which came to rival any fete that Louis XIV ever hosted at Versailles. The book is full of fresh behind-the-scenes reporting about a plethora of boldface names and sets out to explain how Condé Nast established itself as a de facto American aristocracy, anointing an elite and dictating the culture they presided over.

The colorful story of Condé Nast at its zenith and the profound way it influenced how Americans aspired to look, eat, decorate, date, marry, and even think, has never been examined deeply. Empire of the Elite is the first book-length history of an empire whose publications refashioned American notions of prestige, whose editors became celebrities themselves, and whose diminution offers a cautionary tale of class, hubris, and technological change, even as its aesthetic and ethos remain influential to this day.

PRECIOUS PEOPLE

You might enjoy this book if the anxieties of New York's socially-obsessed "elite" interest you, or if you can tolerate a dull narrator with an affected accent. Otherwise, there are probably better ways of spending your time!

If you like gossip….

You’ve found your next listen. I don’t know why but this company and its magazines have always fascinated me. This book is an excellent history of the company and of modern American culture. It’s a great story filled with embarrassing tidbits. It’s also funny. Yes fashion is frivolous but this book goes well beyond that. Great narration too.

Wanted more depth

I thoroughly enjoyed empire of the elite. Some of the glaring issues I found with this audio title was the voice that they used. It is pretty bad I like the actual author’s voice at the very beginning. Also, it would’ve been nice to go into more specificity with some of these stories it was a great overview and for me who really enjoys the world of old magazine culture and 20th century power structures, it gave me a map of what I need to look into next.

Narrators Voice

The author narrated the introduction and had a wonderful crisp and clear voice. They should have narrated entire book. I was very disappointed with the low tonal quality of the narrator

Fantastic surprise! So good!

So interesting! I thought this might be ok but it turns out that it’s fascinating!

I almost didn’t listen though because the audio narrator is…strange. Got used to him.