Hearst Editor Books Recall Glory Days of Magazine Biz

Vanity Fair: Tales from the editorial desk show no sign of tapering off even as newsstands go the way of telephone booths. Two new books are devoted to the craft, rigor, career highs and sudden pressure drops of being big chief. Gerri Hirshey’s biography “Not Pretty Enough: The Unlikely Triumph of Helen Gurley Brown” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Terry McDonell’s memoir, “The Accidental Life: An Editor’s Notes on Writing and Writers” (Knopf) are both chronicles of the long-haul editorial life, instructive, entertaining and briskly told.