Empire of the Elite will bring to light the complicated, class-anxious characters behind Vogue, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, GQ, Bon Appetit, and many other titles who manufactured a vision of luxury and sophistication that shaped consumer habits, cultural trends, intellectual attitudes and political beliefs the world over. It will explore how even today, as the company convulses amidst financial losses and tense debates about its own culture, we are indebted to the Conde aesthetic and ethos. The book will offer readers a new way of thinking about class, influence and the things we value - accompanied by no small serving of delicious gossip, behind-the-curtain stories, and newsworthy tidbits about the celebrities and personalities featured in the glossy pages of Conde Nast's magazines.

It will also tell the story of an awkward and shy billionaire, Si Newhouse, who relished the power, control, and stature that his company afforded him while he hid behind the larger-than-life editors whom he turned into media stars (while never letting them forget who was boss). And it is a story of outsiders becoming insiders, as the cultural, Hollywood, and media elite replaced the Ivy League East Coast WASPs that had defined American notions of status and prestige from the 1800s through the 1960s, and the story of the ultimate influencers before the term was coined.