She made friends and kept them

Few women - or men - have led such varied lives as Fleur Cowles. A highly distinguished journalist and editor of Flair, one of America's top magazines during the 1950s, Fleur Cowles is best known today for the magic realism of her paintings - paintings peopled by jungle beasts, huge flowers and overgrown birds - and for her many famous friends. It is these who fill the pages of her book. She recalls picnicking with Cary Grant in Spain, the weekend Marilyn Monroe spent hiding in her Connecticut home, her many trips as personal emissary for Eisenhower, the time she spent in Argentina and her relationship with Eva Peron. She writes about her experiences on the Korean war front. She includes many glimpses of her close friendship with Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. Others who appear in her book include Margot Fonteyn, Isak Dinesen, Grace Kelly, the Dalai Lama, Harold Wilson, Haile Selassie, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Imelda Marcos, Harold Macmillan, Luciano Pavarotti, Charlie Chaplin, Coco Chanel, Ernest Hemingway and many more. Tough but never malicious, self-respecting but never self-serving, Fleur Cowles's book shares with us the unknown stories of the men and women who have shaped twentieth-century history.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.