When the Going Was Good

“This memoir was essential reading of the most joyful sort, with its evocation of a more abundant, irreverent and freewheeling journalistic time.” —NPR, Best Books of 2025

“Yes, of course there’s tea—or dish, as the old folks say. This is Graydon, after all. Deep, deep dish . . . Waltzing, stumbling, dining, wining and twerking through When the Going Was Good, Graydon Carter’s memoir of his editorial glory days astride the New York Observer, Spy and Vanity Fair, are witty people doing anecdotal things.” —The Washington Post

“Written in his signature gait and filled with glorious details.” —Vanity Fair

“Catnip to anyone in publishing.” —Financial Times

“Carter, a former editor of Spy, the New York Observer, and Vanity Fair, has been held up over the years as a force of style, both in his personal taste and in his expansive vision of creative work, which grew from his editorial experiences during a prosperous and thrilling era in American magazines. This winsome memoir is a recounting of that period, brisk, bright, and full of well-told anecdotes about celebrities, artists, and other power players in Carter’s orbit.” —The New Yorker

“I quickly . . . consumed it. The journalism stories and the character analysis, as Elizabeth Hardwick liked to call gossip, are first-rate.” —Dwight Garner, New York Times Book Review

“When the Going Was Good is catnip for those of us still addicted to magazines.” —LA Times

“Scintillating . . . This highly entertaining book has a good story on every page.” —The Daily Mail

“Canadian journalist Graydon Carter learned the ropes at Time and Life before co-founding the magazine Spy. But he’s best known for his work as editor of Vanity Fair between 1992 and 2017, the period that dominates his breezy memoir. There’s Hollywood gossip, score-settling and tales from the era of limitless editorial budgets.” —Monocle

“Carter’s wry tone and hard-won insights make this a must-read for aspiring journalists and those who lived through the good old days of print magazines. It’s a blast.” —Publishers Weekly

“Carter chronicles the industry and its people with deep love and affection, and it’s a story of discovering one’s passion, persistence, and undeniably being in the right place at the right time . . . An engaging book for lovers of glossy magazines and the people who make them.” —Library Journal

“[A] rollicking memoir and heartfelt paean to the big, glossy, influential magazines of yore . . . Carter’s zestful accounts of his editorial visions and their implementation are fascinating, as are his vivid profiles of writers, photographers, and Hollywood stars. Carter’s delight in the chaos, effort, stress, and exhilaration of his editorships generate the effervescence and depth of this enthusiastically detailed chronicle.” —Booklist

“A page-turning, bighearted, self-knowing, anecdote-rich and often screechingly funny record of a life lived to the full. A great memoir by one of the great editors—and characters—of our time.” —Christopher Buckley

“A splendidly written and warmhearted handbook for how to live, for how to be a friend and a leader and a parent and a partner and a dining companion that gets invited back, and it’s precisely the sort of book that makes one a better person after reading it. Everybody under the age of 40 should read this masterwork so that we might collectively bring back that golden age, and everybody over 40 should read it and summarily wave their handkerchiefs in admirable surrender.” —Lisa Taddeo

“A tour de force—informative, insightful, droll, and delightful. I am overwhelmed by When the Going Was Good.” —Gay Talese

“There is so much to savour in this enormously enjoyable memoir, but it’s the Vanity Fair chapters—an indispensable ‘how-to’ edit a magazine, host a party, curate a dinner, and inspire a legendary stable of writers—that form the centrepiece and highlight of this fascinating ride. You emerge from this enormously enjoyable memoir with the feeling of having just left an unforgettable party.” —Peter Morgan

“What a great read—but it had a downside. It served to remind me how unexciting, unremarkable, and uninteresting I am, especially compared to this Carter fellow, the charming, colorful, raconteur that he is. As Leon once said to me in a scene from Curb Your Enthusiasm, ‘That mothafucka lived a life!” —Larry David

“If you’re at all interested in magazines . . . then you absolutely have to read When the Going Was Good, Graydon Carter’s brilliant raconteurial account of having the time of his life as the editor of Vanity Fair.” —Strong Words (UK)

“Gusseted by gossip and some good-mannered grousing about A-list folk including Donald Trump, Anna Wintour, and Harvey Weinstein (name-dropping is no bad thing in Carter’s book), When the Going Was Good chronicles his journey from young Canadian pup to New York institution, culminating in his 25-year tenure as editor of Vanity Fair, during which he founded the now iconic Oscars afterparty . . . The book itself is a ride, a breakneck jaunt through Carter’s early years.” —Independent (UK)

“I was reminded of the extraordinary largesse involved in the publishing world back in the day, and it’s one that Carter writes about with great joie de vivre.” —Dylan Jones, The London Standard