Front Row: Anna Wintour

With her trademark sunglasses and Louise Brooks bob, Anna Wintour was the recognizable editor-in-chief of Vogue for thirty-seven years. Every month millions of women—and men—read Vogue and were influenced by the pages of the chic and trendy style wish-book that she controlled with an iron hand in a not-always-so-velvet glove since fighting her way to the most prestigious job in fashion journalism.

Based on scores of interviews, Front Row unveils the Anna Wintour even those closest to her didn't know. Jerry Oppenheimer chronicles this insecure and creative powerhouse's climb to the top of the bitchy, competitive fashion magazine world, showing up close, as never before exposed, how she artfully crafted and reinvented herself along the way.

She was called many things—"Nuclear Wintour," by the British press, "cold suspicious and autocratic, a vision in skinniness," by Grace Mirabella, the editor she dethroned at Vogue, and the "Devil" by those who believe she was the inspiration for the bestselling novel written by a former assistant.

Included among the startling revelations in Front Row are:

• Anna's "silver spoon" childhood spent craving time with her father.
• Anna's rebellious teen years in London, obsessed with fashion, night-clubbing and dating roguish men.
• Anna's many tempestuous romances.
• Anna's curious marriage to a brilliant child psychiatrist, her role as a mother, and the shocking scandal that led to divorce when she had an affair with a married man.

"Blistering . . . The most eagerly awaited unauthorized biography . . . Better than fiction." — New York Post