Judy Bachrach

On January 26, 1945, this is what an American soldier in Belgium wrote home to his parents:

On Christmas Day 1937, a famous national leader, then 54 years old, wrote his mistress the following billet-doux:

On Christmas Day 1937, a famous national leader, then 54 years old, wrote his mistress the following billet-doux:

All right, so Diana had Britain’s Fascist-in-Chief in tow, smouldering at her across the dinner table and chatting in baby talk down the telephone. But Hitler: do admit. That was something more. The man with the real power, the one who had putsched his way to the top and had the whole of Germany…

All right, so Diana had Britain’s Fascist-in-Chief in tow, smouldering at her across the dinner table and chatting in baby talk down the telephone. But Hitler: do admit. That was something more. The man with the real power, the one who had putsched his way to the top and had the whole of Germany…

In October 1975, on a lonely stretch of Exmoor, an incompetent hired hitman pointed a 1910 Mauser at a voluble, unbalanced British homosexual named Norman Scott, at which point the gun jammed several times. The only casualty of that strange evening: Scott’s dog, a famously pleasant Great Dane named…

I don’t like to make too much of all the celebrity heirs who, in an extremely down media market, somehow keep on snagging major journalism gigs. It makes me sound bitter and envious and uncharitable, all of which I sort of am. But how can anyone help it? All the so-called smart people who run the…

It’s hard to know what to make of Lincoln Dreamt He Died. On reading the title, my first irreverent thought was: Hey, safe bet. My second: Contrary to popular myth-ology, many of us dream of our own deaths—and guess what? We’re prophetic! Then I studied the subtitle and worried some more. Was this…

The tragedy of Paula Deen, I believe, is not her heart-rending choice of pink liquid cosmetics on the occasion of her famously damp sua culpa (my term for blaming current shortcomings on one’s social origins). Nor is it her provocative defense against accusations of racism: “I is what I is” plays…

"Valerie Plame’s career as a CIA operative was cut short when her cover was blown by George W. Bush’s White House,” reads the blurb of Plame’s latest imaginative stab. “Now, after dedicating herself to protecting the nation from its enemies, Plame turns to fiction .  .  .”

I’m burning with envy. Here I’ve been plugging away of late in places like Oklahoma City and Scottsdale. Meanwhile, both Susan Mary Alsop and Kati Marton, heroines of two ostensibly different books, had a much better idea. The only possible way to provoke interest in their surprisingly similar…

Grey Gardens itself is a marvel. .  .  . Like Ben and Sally’s other two homes, it’s ritzy and historic and perfectly restored and all of that, but more than anything it’s just a beautiful place. The gardens take up an entire acre and are as lush as you can imagine, full of archways and hydrangeas…

The main reason I wanted to read Prime Time, which is Jane Fonda’s latest book—there have been others—about Jane Fonda, is because of its cover. On the right-hand side, next to a large color photograph of the actress, her lips painted the precise color of her sweater (tangerine) and her hair…

Jackie as Editor

Obsession

Mrs. Astor Regrets

The Art of the Public Grovel

White House Ghosts

A Romanov Fantasy

Two Lives

The Last Mrs. Astor

The Best of I.F. Stone

The Hollywood Book of Breakups

With the Beatles

Dog Days

Goldie

The Treehouse

Camp

The Washingtonienne

Sneaking into the Flying Circus

Dishing