Rage for Fame: The Ascent of Clare Boothe Luce

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.