On the motion-picture front, no other publication of our age has achieved the stature, vitality, or magic of Vanity Fair. In its coverage of the film industry, the magazine prides itself on assigning the world's top photographers, writers, and illustrators to explore the brightest stars in the Hollywood firmament. Now, for the first time, the most memorable renderings of this illustrious pantheon have been assembled in one volume: Garbo and Swanson, Fairbanks and Pickford, Gable and Grant, Tracy and Hepburn, Taylor and Burton -- along with today's cinematic giants, including Cruise and Kidman, Nicholson and Streep, De Niro and DiCaprio, Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, and scores more. As this sweeping, lavish book makes clear, Vanity Fair's stable of photographers (Cecil Beaton, Annie Leibovitz, Helmut Newton, Herb Ritts, Edward Steichen, Mario Testino, Bruce Weber, and many others represented here) have helped define modern portraiture. Likewise, Vanity Fair's Hollywood includes Vanity Fair contributors of the past (D.H. Lawrence, Clare Boothe Luce, Dorothy Parker, Carl Sandburg, Walter Winchell, and P.G. Wodehouse) and of the present.

âeoeFor the sake of argument, one must never let a euphemism or a false consolation pass uncontested. The truth seldom lies, but when it does it lies somewhere in between.âe

A Long Short War is the one essential book for anyone who wants to understand the greatest global crisis of the past decade, one that bitterly divided public opinion across the United States -- and the world. Watching events unfold in the U.S. and writing directly from Iraq, Christopher Hitchens reported on the current crisis while at the same time emphasizing the historical perspective -- that this war began when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, only a few months after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Cutting through the spin and slogans shaping popular thought, he tackles the essential questions. What was the true nature of Saddam's regime? Was this really Bush's war for oil? Will our military action spark more terrorist attacks? In this polemical, incendiary account, Hitchens offers hindsight on the rights and wrongs of an epochal war.