Showcases Ephron’s talent as an amazing writer. The topics were dated but still enjoyable. ( )

Interesting read about 1960's artists like Mike Nichols and Ann Rand, Cosmo founder Helen Gurley Brown and Claiborne and Beard, when Nora Ephron was a journalist. I particularly liked the article "Diary of a Beach Wife" about when the wifes leave NY for the summer, and the article about Arthur Frommer. ( )

This is just her collected journalism and is not much of a cohesive collection. Just FYI. ( )

I was drawn to this book because I like Nora Ephron's witty, self-deprecating style and also because one of the articles deals at length with the "foodie" scene in the 1960s, (in which I'm very interested) but which seems a world away now and featured such luminaries as Julia Child, James Beard, Judith Jones and others. Renowned as a talented journalist and story teller, Nora Ephron has written much better stuff than this. As she herself admits in the introduction to the collection, written some years later, these articles are symptomatic of the younger, more self-obsessed, vain and somewhat shallow person she was at the time (and weren't we all at some time in our previous lives?). Somehow her trademark cynicism and wit fall flat in these articles, it's as though she's trying too hard. They are as most other people have noted, very dated, clearly because they are commentaries on a culture that has long since changed and evolved. For that reason, they may have had a good deal more impact and provided refreshing insights into the various worlds she describes at the time they were published, but they just haven't weathered well. ( )

Early essays by Nora Ephron, focused on popular culture. Very readable. ( )