Rage for Fame: The Ascent of Clare Boothe Luce

Rage for Fame: The Ascent of Clare Boothe Luce

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
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â€œHer technique was simple: aim for the top,â€ an envious colleague wrote of Clare Boothe Luce. No American woman of the twentieth century aimed so accurately, or rose so far, as this legendary playwright, politician, and social seductress. Born in New Yorkâ€™s Spanish Harlem, with nothing to recommend her but beauty, ferocious intelligence, and dry wit, she transformed herself into the youthful Â managing editor of Vanity Fair. She married two millionaires and wrote three Broadway hits, including the biting satire, The Women. Her second husband, Henry Luceâ€”the publisher of Time, Fortune, and later at her suggestion Lifeâ€”was only one of the dozens of men she entranced. Adding politics and power to journalism and drama, Clare used sex, street smarts, acid humor, and money to plot a career more improbable than anything in her own fiction. Not content with mere wealth and the acclaim of transatlantic cafÃ© society, Clare Boothe Luce confessed to a â€œrage for fame.â€ This extraordinary bookâ€”the result of more than fifteen years of research by Sylvia Jukes Morris, her chosen biographerâ€”tells how she achieved it.
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Praise for Rage for Fame
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â€œA model biography . . . the sort that only real writers can write.â€â€”Gore Vidal, The New Yorker
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â€œ[The] riveting first part of a two-volume biography . . . Relentlessly candid, meticulously documented, Morrisâ€™s book traces [Clare Boothe] Luceâ€™s rocketing rise from illegitimacy and poverty to wealth, power and fame.â€â€”Hartford Courant
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â€œPowerful and resonant, admiring at times, always critical, at times searing, but ultimately fair.â€â€”The Philadelphia Inquirer
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â€œCrammed with enough drama for several mini-series.â€â€”The New York Times
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â€œAn important book about an important figure . . . a stunning feat of biography.â€â€”Forbes
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â€œA dishy biography that is also a formidable work of research.â€â€”Slate
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â€œOne of those rare books where the reader dreads the final page.â€â€”Newport News Daily Press

From the Hardcover edition.

Country	USA
Author	Sylvia Morris
Binding	Paperback
Brand	Brand: Random House
EAN	9780812992496
Feature	Used Book in Good Condition
ISBN	0812992490
Label	Random House Trade Paperbacks
Manufacturer	Random House Trade Paperbacks
NumberOfItems	1
NumberOfPages	592
PublicationDate	2014-04-01
Publisher	Random House Trade Paperbacks
ReleaseDate	2014-04-01
Studio	Random House Trade Paperbacks

Rage for Fame: The Ascent of Clare Boothe Luce

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