Michael Gross

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The Dogs Bark by Truman Capote (out of print). Back when he still had his chops, before his prayers (for cocaine and alcohol?) were answered, Capote sketched Marilyn Monroe, Cecil Beaton, Mae West, Humphrey Bogart—and skewered Marlon Brando. “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor,” he wrote. This may have been his tastiest dish.

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The Rich and Other Atrocities by Charlotte Curtis (out of print). When I got a job at The New York Times, my wife gave me this book and said, “This is what you can do.” Though I tried, I never felt I lived up to the example set by Curtis, of whom it was said, “She cuts them so fine, they don’t know they’re bleeding.”

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Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, $14). Back in the day, before she got political, gimlet-eyed Didion took apart the famed hippie district Haight-Ashbury “in the cold spring of 1967” and showed just how mighty a pen and a pad can be.

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Princes, Playboys & High-Class Tarts by Taki (out of print). A poor little rich Greek boy, Taki Theodoracopulos loves to tell tales of the naked ambition, rudeness, vulgarity, stupidity, and occasional charm and style of the aristocrats and pretenders he’s spent his life studying. He turns their waste into a premium product.

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Fame and Obscurity by Gay Talese (Ivy, $19). Whether dissecting the building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, extolling the expats who staffed The Paris Review, or dissecting a crooner in the best celebrity profile ever written—“Frank Sinatra Has a Cold”—Talese set the bar high for magazine writers.

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Within the Context of No Context

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