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Graydon Carter’s When the Going Was Good is a backstage pass to the last great era of glossy magazines—when stories were long, editors were kings, and a good cover could move culture. Carter starts as a drifting Canadian kid with big New York dreams, then climbs his way through Time, co-founds the razor-sharp satirical Spy, and ultimately steers Vanity Fair into its modern heyday under Si Newhouse’s watchful (and surprisingly hands-off) ownership.
Along the way, he relives the adrenaline of landing the “Deep Throat” scoop, the high-wire politics of celebrity and power, and the brutal pressure of getting it right when the whole world is watching. It’s funny, fast, and surprisingly human—a memoir about ambition, taste, risk, and building a team that can pull off the impossible.
