When the Going Was Good Spiral-Bound | 2025-03-25

"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

Advance Praise:

"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