By turns amusing, enlightening, and plaintive, the former kid from Newark who became editor of Vogue remembers her rise and explains her fallwith a little dishing on the side. The daughter of Italian immigrants Florence Bellofatto and Anthony Mirabella, a Ronrico rum salesman who gambled too much and introduced the daiquiri to America, Grace Mirabella launched herself at the postwar fashion establishment because she wanted to be around the best of everything. Rejecting retail, and with a degree from Skidmore and a lot of dancing at the Stork Club under her belt, in 1952 she invaded the WASPy CondÇ Nast world of Babses and Babes, of young editors chosen for their long legs and their connections to the Rockefellers. Women worked at Vogue to earn ``pin money,'' and it was infra dig to ask the cost of anything. Mirabella represented the arrival of the working woman at Vogue; she wanted to celebrate real clothing for really stylish and talented women, clothes that they could use to live full lives. Mirabella tells of her years as Diana Vreeland's assistant; she admires Vreeland's brains and glamour while at the same time cataloguing her eccentricities and excesses. After Vreeland's firing in 1971, she bemoans her own lack of loyalty to her former boss in taking her job. With the advent of the venal '80s, Mirabella also lost favor and was fired after a 17-year tenure. (The editor learned of her dismissal only after Liz Smith announced it on TV.) She blows a few poison darts at the fashion celebrities who made her life miserable, including Richard Avedon and Alex Liberman, the ``yellow Russian'' (in Vreeland's words), and describes her rebound to begin the magazine bearing her name. Occasionally the sad tale of a fashion victim, but most often an interesting, chatty view of the trenches at CondÇ Nast and in women's journalism. (32 b&w pictures, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-42613-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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