CONTRIBUTORS

Douglas Brinkley

When Nancy Reagan and the Ronald Reagan Foundation invited contributing editor Douglas Brinkley to edit the former president’s diaries, he eagerly accepted the challenge. “It has been a work in progress for the last three years,” Brinkley says. “In order to finish the book, last June I moved my family from New Orleans to Simi Valley, California, and we lived right by the Reagan Library.” Reagan kept a daily diary, and by the end of his two terms in office, the pages—handwritten, on unlined paper—numbered in the thousands. “It’s a wonderful and unique window into his presidency,” says Brinkley, “and you’re living it in real time.” The Reagan Diaries, with an introduction by Brinkley, is out this month from HarperCollins.

Paul Goldberger

In “Diller@Gehry.nyc,” page 178, Pulitzer Prizewinning author and architecture critic Paul Goldberger reports on the new IAC building, overlooking the Hudson River in Manhattan, the result of two highly regarded figures working together: executive Barry Diller and architect Frank Gehry. “It is less common than it once was for companies to achieve identities architecturally,” Goldberger says. “Museums and universities are more inclined to commission a building like this. In a way, when Diller hired Gehry, he was reaching back to an earlier time when, as with the Woolworth Building, corporations were important patrons of architecture.” According to Goldberger, the structure is a welcome addition to the Chelsea neighborhood. “For various reasons, Frank Gehry has never built a freestanding building in the city—it’s great to have one at last.”

Michael O’Neill

This month, Vanity Fair contributing photographer Michael O’Neill celebrates a group that has no trouble holding poses: yogis. O’Neill, a Kundalini devotee himself, suggested the idea of a yoga portfolio to V.F. and spent a year capturing everyone, from the field’s top gurus to sinewy celebrities, in practice. For the 20-page portfolio on the global phenomenon, which begins on page 192, he traveled more than 100,000 miles. O’Neill professes “intense, heartfelt love” for the practice. And as an artist and student, he recognizes the “long learning curve ahead” and is attempting to “study and absorb the energy of the masters.”

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William Shawcross

This month, internationally renowned writer and broadcaster William Shawcross spotlights the Queen of England (page 164) and reveals the softer side of Her Majesty. Having written the book Queen and Country and the V.F. feature story “The Last Icon,” both in 2002, Shawcross was able to use his extensive connections to reach out to the Queen’s closest confidants and friends. Says Shawcross, “In her photographs she appears restrained, less so now than in past years. But certainly in private, at smaller occasions, she’s much more relaxed and jokey; with her husband she’s almost coquettish. They both work incredibly hard; they are both in their 80s, still they seem years younger.” Shawcross’s next project is the official biography of the Queen Mother.

Brigitte Lacombe

Capturing the beautiful and famous is in the job description for photographer Brigitte Lacombe, but shooting Mamie Gummer (“Profile with Pedigree,” page 184) had special significance. “It was a touching experience to photograph Mamie as a confident young actress. I am very close with her mother, Meryl Streep, so, for years, I have casually photographed Mamie in the context of her family life,” says Lacombe. Comparing Gummer to Streep, Lacombe relates, “One can see the similarities between mother and daughter. From one angle I will see a young Meryl; the next second Meryl has vanished and all I see is Mamie. These photographs capture Mamie.” Gummer, an actress on the rise, will appear with an all-star cast, including Streep, in the film Evening, in theaters this month.

Cullen Murphy

Editor-at-large Cullen Murphy has written a number of books, from an anthropological study of human garbage to a groundbreaking look at feminism and the Bible. In his new book, Are We Rome? (Houghton Mifflin), he takes a fresh crack at the title question. “Skeptics may snort, but some important comparisons between modern America and ancient Rome really do hold up,” Murphy says. “It’s not just ‘bread and circuses.’” In an excerpt, “The Sack of Washington,” page 186, he focuses on a dangerous trend in the United States that similarly bedeviled ancient Rome: the privatization of the government’s authority and functions. “Over time,” Murphy observes, “public power becomes powerless, and private power becomes paramount. When there’s a crisis, nobody’s in charge.” Prior to coming to Vanity Fair, Murphy was for many years the managing editor of The Atlantic Monthly.

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Nick Tosches

“I never thought there could be so much to a dead fish,” says contributing editor Nick Tosches, who writes about sushi’s inexorable conquest of America in “If You Knew Sushi,” on page 120. As in a previous piece for V.F., on the mind-boggling capitalist free-for-all that is Dubai, Tosches’s story this month takes him to a mecca of global commerce: Tsukiji, the world’s largest fish market, in Tokyo. “It’s surprising that a fish market could be so fascinating and that there could be rainbows of fables and history and information behind a single piece of sushi,” he says. Tosches is currently working on a history of the post-atomic age, with Keith Richards as the central figure, to be published by Doubleday.

Bruce Weber

Contributing photographer Bruce Weber combines beauty and brains, the young and the old, as he turns his lens toward editor Bob Silvers and actress Emma Roberts. “The incredible thing about Bob Silvers,” Weber says, “is that he’s really read each and every one of the books in his office, the way one eats a great meal at La Grenouille.” In contrast to Silvers, Roberts inspired Weber on a more personal level with her combination of beauty and intelligence. Weber’s new short film, Wine and Cupcakes, premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival, in Austin, Texas, earlier this year, and a restored print of Let’s Get Lost, his Oscar-nominated documentary on Chet Baker, will have a special June engagement in New York City.

Jonathan Kelly

For nearly three years, Jonathan Kelly has been executive assistant to the editor of Vanity Fair. Kelly, who says he’s considered changing his name to “Graydon Carter’s office,” sees the magazine’s goings-on from an unusually lofty perch. “My job is fastpaced journalism grad school, in which you get a bird’s-eye view of all the components that make up a magazine.” Kelly also serves as deputy editor of the Vanities section, under David Kamp, Carter’s former protege from his Sy-magazine days. Of his professional lineage, Kelly says, “When you work for Graydon you join a new family, with all these surrogate aunts and uncles who have worked for him over the years. It’s an incredible structure to be part of, in and outside of work.” Speaking of lineage, Kelly’s mother, Sheila Weller, is a contributor to the magazine.

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