*** 9/29/25 *** Just finished this intensively researched history of Conde Nast, written with such densely packed information covering the family over 15+ decades, from the birth of Conde Montrose Nast in 1873 to the modern 2020's++ era.
Michael Grynbaum's writing style is as one might expect for an author who has spent the entirety of his career at The New York Times after graduating from Harvard - every single sentence conveys powerful information, and the vocabulary is spectacular. I gave up trying to highlight interesting facts 20% in. Despite this being only 368-pages (hardback), it reads like a much longer book, even though the actual written content ends at the 50% mark! Readers then get photos from 51%-58%, and then citations by chapter until the index begins at 74%.
This isn't to say that the book is anything but educational, compelling, shocking, and eye-opening - it is all of those things and more. It is kind of like when you are traveling and have an amazing tour guide who educates you about particular site's history, anecdotes, and interesting facts - you are mesmerized, but have no hope of recalling 90% of it later, it is just too much information.
What stands out to me is how Conde Nast played a pretty major role in the pre-history of out current president, by writing an article that they themselves pushed into a deal to publish his infamous book that put him in front of the American people for the first time. Another major emphasis is the absolutely stunning level of consumption of $$$ in the name of publishing their magazines. The newspapers in their dynasty paid for all the spending by the magazine staff: the cars, homes, designer clothes, elite hotel suites, travel, and as many other ways you can think of to spend copious amounts of money, all in the name of defining elite culture. The last thing that jumped out at me is how terribly wrong Si Newhouse and his leaders were in paying attention to the internet. Thankfully, the family had various businesses, made some good investments along the way, were always rich (private company), and have so much money they will never be poor lol.
Very interesting history and a must read for anyone who lived through the magazine eras of the 70's, 80's and 90's. 5-stars.
*** 9/16/25 *** Picked by my book club - looking forward to reading about those 80's/90's power brokers who influenced - defined, really - culture in that glorious pre-internet era where actual written blurbs, articles, and images were created, disseminated, and consumed by the public, instead of digital content on smartphones.