Tina and Harry Come to America: Tina Brown, Harry Evans, and the Uses of Power

by Judy Bachrach

Book Overview

Writing with a laser-sharp wit and a perceptive eye for revealing detail, Judy Bachrach traces the course of two careers and one romance--all driven by soaring ambition. With the right amount of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684837633
• ISBN13: 9780684837635
• Release Date: July 2001
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.43 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

nasty fun

This book is a nasty, in a sophistiacated 1930s sort of way. Think, Clare Booth Luce's "The Women". This book is the story of an unrelenting social climber who had genuine talent and ability on her side but little grace, humility or kindness. And it caught up with her. The book does a good job of showing why Ms. Brown has so many enemies and why she rose to such starry heights in the first place. It's great for people who love NYC, or who love journalism, or anyone who just wants a juicy piece of shameless gossip.

get real

journalism and its practice isn't really everybody's top interest, but this is one of the best books i've ever read. tina brown is the editor of our generation, and how she did it is of compelling interest to women in journalism everywhere. one way she did it was by writing what can only be called faye wray journalism in the 1970s -- something invented by older blondes on this side of the atlantic. it makes for a great read, and it helped both of them find rich mentors. that's part of the way the world is, and this book is exactly about that, including the anti-semitism of britain (tina is one-fourth jewish) and how when she could not conquer british society as she wished, tina chose to conquer hollywood. (her father, whom she loved, was a B-movie producer.) how she persuaded media mogul s.i. newhouse to fund her money-losing yet spectacular rise is suggested (let's just say blondeness is involved). the biography of her husband, harry evans, is as compelling as tina's -- almost d. h. lawrence -- starting out sexually compulsive as the crusading editor in some polluted northern england rust belt town. how tina has mined her older husband's gift for graphics is displayed. i loved the roseanne issue of the new yorker which all the white boys hated. roseanne is tina and tina is roseanne. and i'll wager (were i a bettin' man) that that's why people hate this book. you need to read it. tina (along with katharine graham and princess diana) was a captain of the girl team. and this is how she got there. cover 'em up if you got 'em.

UN-PUT-DOWNABLE!

Tina Brown and Harry Evans are insufficiently diabolical to fill one with the schadenfreude this cleverly written book would like to provoke. Still...I couldn't put it down! Call it "a guilty pleasure." Brown's and Evans' rise and (partial) fall, vaulting ambition, sucking-up to their betters, uncaring ruthlessness toward underlings, total self-centeredness -- all that is well and cruelly depicted. But the pathos of it all is not to be found in the price they paid in terms of diminished honor and integrity, but in the total pettiness of their concerns. Like -- who cares about the machinations of the editor of such silly enterprises as "Vanity Fair" and "Talk"? Here are two talented and well-educated people wasting their lives by devoting them to junk. Therein lies the waste. There are lessons to be learned from reading this book...and the lessons aren't pretty!

the seven deadly sins carry a price, but that's the bargin

This story has been told and repeated since man has recorded history; the rise to power by people, in this case a couple (see - our former first couple; the Ceaucesceau's of Romania; the Milosevic's of Serbia), who seek power and dominion over all in their orbit. The limitations of their power are usually circumscribed by their ability to reach, and sway to their whim, large masses of people, and their ability to protect themselves from others who wish to do the same in their sted. Harry Evans, the son of a train engineer, former editor of the London Sunday Times and CEO of Random House, and his wife, Tina Brown, a woman 25 years his junior and former maven of Vanity Fair, have been skewered by those whom they abused on their rise to power. Their unvarnished, naked ambition, ruthlessly on display in their drive for success, fame and fortune, at all costs, has left many "broken bodies" in their wake and from what is told here, they forgot an important rule of life. "Be nice to those you meet on the way up because you're going to meet them on the way down." And from the looks of things, meeting them again does not seem high on Harry and Tina's list. Judy Bachrach, a writer for Vanity Fair, who worked for Tina Brown at same, has written a particularly virulent piece on this power couple by exploiting old wounds among their former employee's and workers. Resentment is too mild a word to describe the feelings of these former comrades who have unloaded all of their bitterness onto Ms. Bachrach who in turn has transmitted it to the world at large via "Harry and Tina come to America"; and, it seems that anyone and everyone who has had something to say has said it, and in spades. H & T's grasping for fame, their lust for power, their unabashed attempts at image control, and their need for position, is an old story. What has derailed their upward bound comet has been their ultimate inability to deliver bottom line performance in their business ventures. Their failures in this venue have brought on cracks in their edifice and their fall, once underway, has continued to accelerate at an exponential rate. Read this book and see if you can apply its lessons to your favorite biblical reference, I'm sure one is there. Judy Bachrach is to be commended for providing an avenue for so many to vent and bear witness, and in the end, "ain't that America!