Rage for Fame: The Ascent of Clare Boothe Luce - Softcover

Morris, Sylvia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812992490 ISBN 13: 9780812992496

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 2014

Synopsis

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
 
“Her technique was simple: aim for the top,” 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 York’s Spanish Harlem, with nothing to recommend her but beauty, ferocious intelligence, and dry wit, she transformed herself into the youthful  managing editor of Vanity Fair. She married two millionaires and wrote three Broadway hits, including the biting satire, The Women. Her second husband, Henry Luce—the publisher of Time, Fortune, and later at her suggestion Life—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 café society, Clare Boothe Luce confessed to a “rage for fame.” This extraordinary book—the result of more than fifteen years of research by Sylvia Jukes Morris, her chosen biographer—tells how she achieved it.
 
Praise for Rage for Fame
 
“A model biography . . . the sort that only real writers can write.”—Gore Vidal, The New Yorker
 
“[The] riveting first part of a two-volume biography . . . Relentlessly candid, meticulously documented, Morris’s book traces [Clare Boothe] Luce’s rocketing rise from illegitimacy and poverty to wealth, power and fame.”—Hartford Courant
 
“Powerful and resonant, admiring at times, always critical, at times searing, but ultimately fair.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
“Crammed with enough drama for several mini-series.”—The New York Times
 
“An important book about an important figure . . . a stunning feat of biography.”—Forbes
 
“A dishy biography that is also a formidable work of research.”—Slate
 
“One of those rare books where the reader dreads the final page.”—Newport News Daily Press

About this title

Review:

Tired of high-minded intellectual biographies? Just want to dish? This is the book. Clare Boothe (1903-87) rose from illegitimacy and obscurity by sheer force of brains and sex appeal to become a powerful magazine editor (at Vanity Fair), hit playwright (The Women, 1936), and--by 1940, when this volume ends--budding war correspondent. She married mega-publisher Henry Luce in 1935, but he was one in a lifelong string of men she charmed and used, in author Sylvia Jukes Morris's stinging appraisal. Little sympathy here for the talented, driven Boothe, but plenty of juicy details.

From the Inside Flap:

rich with mesmerizing narrative, Rage for Fame recounts the story of the flowering years of Clare Booth Luce--a former congresswoman and editor of Vanity Fair--a striking woman whose private life was as intriguing and spectacular as her public life. 45 photos.
From the Hardcover edition.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0812992490
• ISBN 13: 9780812992496
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 592