The Price of Illusion

Book excerpt: "From Joan Juliet Buck, former editor-in-chief of Paris Vogue comes her dazzling, compulsively readable memoir: a fabulous account of four decades spent in the creative heart of London, New York, Los Angeles, and Paris, chronicling her quest to discover the difference between glitter and gold, illusion and reality, and what looks like happiness from the thing itself. Born into a world of make-believe as the daughter of a larger-than-life film producer, Joan Juliet Buck's childhood was a whirlwind of famous faces, ever-changing home addresses, and a fascination with the shiny surfaces of things. When Joan became the first and only American woman ever to fill Paris Vogue's coveted position of Editor in Chief, a "figurehead in the cult of fashion and beauty," she had the means to recreate for her aging father, now a widower, the life he'd enjoyed during his high-flying years, a splendid illusion of glamorous excess that could not be sustained indefinitely. Joan's memoir tells the story of a life lived in the best places at the most interesting times: London and New York in the swinging 1960s, Rome and Milan in the dangerous 1970s, Paris in the heady 1980s and 1990s. But when her fantasy life at Vogue came to an end, she had to find out who she was after all those years of make-believe. She chronicles this journey in beautiful and at times heartbreaking prose, taking the reader through the wild parties and the fashion, the celebrities and creative geniuses as well as love, loss, and the loneliness of getting everything you thought you wanted and finding it's not what you'd imagined. While Joan's story is unique, her journey toward self-discovery is refreshing and universal"--