The Importance Of Being Famous: Behind the Scenes of the Celebrity-Industrial Complex - Tapa blanda

"The book achieves a fresh spin thanks to incisive updates and story-behind-the-story anecdotes, all peppered with the author's pull-no-punches observations." -People

Vanity Fair's Maureen Orth covers lives led in public, on camera, at the very top-from Margaret Thatcher to Tina Turner, from the political theater of the Clinton White House to the strange kingdom of Princess Diana's almost father-in-law. Now this National Magazine Award-winning reporter pulls back the curtain to reveal those who flourish (or sometimes flame out) at these heady altitudes, unraveling their complex lives and exploring the chemistry, the very DNA, of celebrity today.

The Importance of Being Famous is a portrait of an era where the media grew larger, the distinction between fame and infamy grew smaller, and celebrity ruled all. Orth delivers a revealing, sophisticated look at the big room of modern celebrity and the star-making machinery of the "celebrity-industrial complex."

Since 1993, Maureen Orth has shared the title Special Correspondent with Dominck Dunne at Vanity Fair. Her first book, Vulgar Favors (Delacorte, 1999), appeared for three weeks on The New York Times Bestseller list. She has written for many major magazines and newspapers and has also served as a network correspondent for NBC News. She has won the National Magazine Award for her coverage of the arts at Newsweek and was nominated for her work at Vanity Fair. Her late husband was Tim Russert, the Washington bureau chief of NBC News and moderator of Meet the Press. She lives in Washington D.C.