
When the Going Was Good
An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines
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Narrated by:
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Graydon Carter
About this listen
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
From the pages of Vanity Fair to the red carpets of Hollywood, editor Graydon Carter’s memoir revives the glamorous heyday of print magazines when they were at the vanguard of American culture
When Graydon Carter was offered the editorship of Vanity Fair in 1992, he knew he faced an uphill battle—how to make the esteemed and long-established magazine his own. Not only was he confronted with a staff that he perceived to be loyal to the previous regime, but he arrived only a few years after launching Spy magazine, which gloried in skewering the celebrated and powerful—the very people Vanity Fair venerated. With curiosity, fearlessness, and a love of recent history and glamour that would come to define his storied career in magazines, Carter succeeded in endearing himself to his editors, contributors, and readers, as well as as well as those who would grace the pages of Vanity Fair. He went on to run the magazine with overwhelming success for the next two and a half decades.
Filled with colorful memories and intimate details, When the Going Was Good is Graydon Carter’s lively recounting of how he made his mark as one of the most talented editors in the business. Moving to New York from Canada, he worked at Time, Life, The New York Observer, and Spy, before catching the eye of Condé Nast chairman Si Newhouse, who pulled him in to run Vanity Fair. In Newhouse he found an unwavering champion, a loyal proprietor who gave Carter the editorial and financial freedom to thrive. Annie Leibovitz’s photographs would come to define the look of the magazine, as would the “New Establishment” and annual Hollywood issues. Carter further planted a flag in Los Angeles with the legendary Vanity Fair Oscar party.
With his inimitable voice and signature quip, he brings listeners to lunches and dinners with the great and good of America, Britain, and Europe. He assembled one of the most formidable stables of writers and photographers under one roof, and here he re-creates in real time the steps he took to ensure Vanity Fair cemented its place as the epicenter of art, culture, business, and politics, even as digital media took hold. Charming, candid, and brimming with stories, When the Going Was Good perfectly captures the last golden age of print magazines from the inside out.
©2025 Graydon Carter (P)2025 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Yes, of course there’s tea—or dish, as the old folks say. This is Graydon, after all. Deep, deep dish . . . Waltzing, stumbling, dining, wining and twerking through When the Going Was Good, Graydon Carter’s memoir of his editorial glory days astride the New York Observer, Spy and Vanity Fair, are witty people doing anecdotal things.”—The Washington Post
“Carter, a former editor of Spy, the New York Observer, and Vanity Fair, has been held up over the years as a force of style, both in his personal taste and in his expansive vision of creative work, which grew from his editorial experiences during a prosperous and thrilling era in American magazines. This winsome memoir is a recounting of that period, brisk, bright, and full of well-told anecdotes about celebrities, artists, and other power players in Carter’s orbit.”—The New Yorker
“I quickly . . . consumed it. The journalism stories and the character analysis, as Elizabeth Hardwick liked to call gossip, are first-rate.”—Dwight Garner, New York Times Book Review
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Story
By the age of 30, I had suffered more tragedies in my life than anyone should ever have to experience. Even though I ran and owned a multi-billion-dollar enterprise that I saved from bankruptcy, had more money than I could spend, and lived in a high-rise penthouse on Fifth Avenue, my life was still desolate and empty. I closed off my heart and myself to everyone. This was my life until a woman named Zoey Benson crossed my path. For the first time in over five years, I felt something. A feeling that I had long buried deep inside me. A feeling I never wanted to experience again.
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My opinion not yours
- By Linda Mapstone on 10-09-20
By: Sandi Lynn
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Mad House
- How Donald Trump, MAGA Mean Girls, a Former Used Car Salesman, a Florida Nepo Baby, and a Man with Rats in His Walls Broke Congress
- By: Annie Karni, Luke Broadwater
- Narrated by: Karen Murray
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
The United States Congress has always been messy and far-from-august, but as Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater show here, in scorching, shocking detail, it has reached some kind of chaotic bottom. The anarchy that reigned over Congress’s lower chamber in the wake of the January 6th attack on the Capitol Building—the election of serial liar and con-man George Santos, revenge porn being shown on the floor of the house, and the theatrical high jinks of Lauren Boebert—all were a sign of decay and dysfunction of the highest order.
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The crazy behind the scenes in DC
- By Charles Staten Island NY on 04-28-25
By: Annie Karni, and others
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Funny Because It's True
- How The Onion Created Modern American News Satire
- By: Christine Wenc
- Narrated by: Christine Wenc
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 1988, a band of University of Wisconsin–Madison undergrads and dropouts began publishing a free weekly newspaper with no editorial stance other than “You Are Dumb.” Just wanting to make a few bucks, they wound up becoming the bedrock of modern satire over the course of twenty years, changing the way we consume both our comedy and our news. The Onion served as a hilarious and brutally perceptive satire of the absurdity and horrors of late twentieth-century American life and grew into a global phenomenon.
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Her lack of knowledge.
- By Anonymous User on 04-20-25
By: Christine Wenc
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Care and Feeding
- A Memoir
- By: Laurie Woolever
- Narrated by: Laurie Woolever
- Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In this moving, hilarious, and insightful memoir, Laurie Woolever traces her path from a small-town childhood to working at revered restaurants and food publications, alternately bolstered and overshadowed by two of the most powerful men in the business. But there’s more to the story than the two bold-faced names on her resume: Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain.
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Ruined by dull narration
- By pinkwoo on 03-12-25
By: Laurie Woolever
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Who Knew
- By: Barry Diller
- Narrated by: Barry Diller
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Writing in his own singular voice, Barry Diller delivers both an astute and entertaining business memoir and a surprisingly frank coming-of-age story. After starting his career in the mailroom of the William Morris Agency, Diller went on to have one of the most extraordinary ascents in show business history, inventing the TV Movie of the Week for ABC at age twenty-seven, becoming CEO of Paramount Pictures at age thirty-two, and launching the Fox TV network at age forty-four.
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Bravo
- By Patrick J Griffin on 05-27-25
By: Barry Diller
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The Vanity Fair Diaries
- 1983-1992
- By: Tina Brown
- Narrated by: Tina Brown
- Length: 16 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Vanity Fair Diaries is the story of an Englishwoman barely out of her twenties who arrives in New York City with a dream. Summoned from London in hopes that she can save Condé Nast's troubled new flagship Vanity Fair, Tina Brown is immediately plunged into the maelstrom of the competitive New York media world and the backstabbing rivalries at the court of the planet's slickest, most glamour-focused magazine company. She survives the politics, the intrigue, and the attempts to derail her by a simple stratagem.
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There is something about the Brits...
- By Sylvia on 12-11-17
By: Tina Brown
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Cellar Rat
- My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly
- By: Hannah Selinger
- Narrated by: Hannah Selinger
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Hannah Selinger chronicles her rise and fall in the restaurant business, beginning with the gritty hometown pub where she fell in love with the industry and ending with her final post serving celebrities at the Hamptons classic Nick & Toni’s. In between, listeners will join Selinger on her emotional journey as she learns the joys of fine fine dining, the allure and danger of power, and what it takes to walk away from a career you love when it no longer serves you.
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Entertaining for entertainment’s sake
- By Joanna Rockwell on 05-12-25
By: Hannah Selinger
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Notes to John
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Julianne Moore
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In November 1999, Joan Didion began seeing a psychiatrist because, as she wrote to a friend, her family had had “a rough few years.” She described the sessions in a journal she created for her husband, John Gregory Dunne. For several months, Didion recorded conversations with the psychiatrist in meticulous detail. The initial sessions focused on alcoholism, adoption, depression, anxiety, guilt, and the heartbreaking complexities of her relationship with her daughter, Quintana. The subjects evolved to include her work, which she was finding difficult to maintain for sustained periods.
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This autobiography discusses notes from therapy regarding Joan’s daughter’s addiction. Very insightful!
- By Laura Borealis on 04-24-25
By: Joan Didion
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Waiting on the Moon
- Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters, and Goddesses
- By: Peter Wolf
- Narrated by: Peter Wolf
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Peter Wolf grew up in the Bronx, a child of “fellow travelers” whose artistic inclinations influenced both his love of music and his initial desire to become a painter. Stories of his loving and sometimes eccentric parents complement scenes depicting a very young Bob Dylan as he arrived on the Greenwich Village folk scene. Reflections on Wolf’s studies in Boston—where he shared an apartment with David Lynch—are braided with accounts of first love, an untraditional literary education, and early musical influences such as Muddy Waters.
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Should have been called “Name Dropping with Peter Wolf”
- By Placeholder on 03-19-25
By: Peter Wolf
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The Maverick's Museum
- Albert Barnes and His American Dream
- By: Blake Gopnik
- Narrated by: Jeremy Arthur
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From prominent critic and biographer Blake Gopnik comes a compelling new portrait of America’s first great collector of modern art, Albert Coombs Barnes. Raised in a Philadelphia slum shortly after the Civil War, Barnes rose to earn a medical degree and then made a fortune from a pioneering antiseptic treatment for newborns. Never losing sight of the working-class neighbors of his youth, Barnes became a ruthless advocate for their rights and needs.
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A colorful portrait of a complicated man
- By Stephanie on 03-21-25
By: Blake Gopnik
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Lorne
- The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live
- By: Susan Morrison
- Narrated by: Kristen DiMercurio, Susan Morrison
- Length: 22 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Over the fifty years that Lorne Michaels has been at the helm of Saturday Night Live, he has become a revered and inimitable presence in the entertainment world. He’s a tastemaker, a mogul, a withholding father figure, a genius spotter of talent, a shrewd businessman, a name-dropper, a raconteur, the inspiration for Dr. Evil, the winner of more than a hundred Emmys—and, essentially, a mystery. Generations of writers and performers have spent their lives trying to figure him out, by turns demonizing and lionizing him.
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Great read but several weird mispronunciations
- By Larry Carlat on 02-20-25
By: Susan Morrison
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Her Lotus Year
- China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson
- By: Paul French
- Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Before she was the Duchess of Windsor, Bessie Wallis Warfield was Mrs. Wallis Spencer, wife of Earl “Win” Spencer, a US Navy aviator. From humble beginnings in Baltimore, she rose to marry a man who gave up his throne for her. But what made Wallis Spencer, Navy Wife, the woman who could become the Duchess of Windsor? The answers lie in her one-year sojourn in China. In her memoirs, Wallis described her time in China as her “Lotus Year,” referring to Homer’s Lotus Eaters, a group living in a state of dreamy forgetfulness, never to return home.
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An interesting new look at Wallis Simpson
- By boleyn1532 on 12-09-24
By: Paul French
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We Tell Ourselves Stories
- Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine
- By: Alissa Wilkinson
- Narrated by: Alissa Wilkinson
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
In this cultural biography, New York Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson examines Joan Didion's influence through the lens of American mythmaking. As a young girl, Didion was infatuated with John Wayne and his on-screen bravado, and was fascinated by her California pioneer ancestry and the infamous Donner Party. The mythos that preoccupied her early years continued to influence her work as a magazine writer and film critic in New York, offering glimmers of the many stories Didion told herself that would come to unravel over the course of her career. But out west, show business beckoned.
By: Alissa Wilkinson
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Kingmaker
- Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue
- By: Sonia Purnell
- Narrated by: Louise Brealey
- Length: 16 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Pamela Churchill Harriman died in 1997, the obituaries that followed were predictably scathing–and many were downright sexist. Written off as a mere courtesan and social climber, her true legacy was overshadowed by a glamorous social life and her infamous erotic adventures. Much of what she did behind the scenes–on both sides of the Atlantic–remained invisible and secret. That is, until now: with a wealth of fresh research, interviews and newly discovered sources, Sonia Purnell unveils for the first time the full, spectacular story of how she left an indelible mark on the world today.
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Pamela reigns! But.....
- By Lucy Johnson on 11-30-24
By: Sonia Purnell
GC’s reading is great. It’s like a dinner with him, where he tells you his life’s story.
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Vanity Fair days
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Interesting particularly if you're in the business.
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𝗡𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗮 𝗗𝘂𝗹𝗹 𝗠𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁
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hope you do a killer book Mr Carter
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Graydon’s voice
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Just wonderful. Exquisite and honest storytelling
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Graydon’s Swan Song Sails Smoothly
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Remembering when...
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Made me laugh out loud repeatedly!!
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