Susan Swain on the First Ladies Ahead of Showtime's New Series "The First Lady"

Last week, on April 18 and 19, the woman formerly known as Grace Kelly and, after marriage, Princess Grace of Monaco, would have marked 68 years of marriage to Prince Rainier III, had either lived to see it. Grace died at just 52 years old from injuries sustained in a car accident in 1982; Rainier died in 2005, 23 years later. Born in Philadelphia, Grace had just won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Country Girl when she met Rainier in April 1955. It all started as a publicity gimmick while she was in Europe attending the Cannes Film Festival that, somehow, turned into what would become a 26-year marriage, but before their three children Princess Caroline, Prince Albert, and Princess Stephanie, and before her work as Princess of Monaco, and before her tragic death, there was the dress—one of the most elegant, memorable, and famous wedding gowns of all time. On her wedding day, Grace was 26 years old and was retiring from acting to marry a literal prince. Grace was arguably at the height of her Hollywood career when she met Rainier, and by the end of 1955, they were engaged; Rainier was already the monarch of the small principality of Monaco in the French Riviera and had been on the throne since 1949. He was 32 years old when they married, and reportedly being pressured—as all who are on the throne or who will be on the throne are—to produce an heir to ensure the continuation of the monarchy. As per Monegasque tradition, on April 18, 1956, Grace and Rainier were married in a civil ceremony in the throne room of the Royal Palace in front of just 80 guests. The ceremony was performed by Monaco’s Minister of Justice and was the precursor to the next day’s religious ceremony—that one watched by over 30 million viewers. Grace’s $60,000 religious ceremony wedding dress was a gift from MGM to its star and was a worthwhile investment: is has become one of the most iconic wedding dresses of all time. The timeless look has gone on to inspire brides like Kate Middleton, whose 2011 Alexander McQueen gown bore a close resemblance to the gown worn by Grace, another royal bride that walked down the aisle 55 years before her. Grace and Rainier’s religious ceremony on April 19 was held at the St. Nicholas Cathedral, and the high mass was conducted by the bishop of Monaco. A mixture of high society and Hollywood stars gathered for the occasion, including Ava Gardner, Cary Grant, Gloria Swanson, Aristotle Onassis, Conrad Hilton, and Egypt’s former King Farouk. Tatler reports that “During the wedding breakfast, guests were treated to lobster, caviar, and a six-tier wedding cake by the Hotel de Paris’ pastry chefs, from which two live turtle doves were released after Rainier sliced through it with his sword.” The couple left in a Rolls-Royce—a gift from their subjects—and sailed away on a seven-week honeymoon onboard Deo Juvante II, a gift from Onassis; by the time the newlyweds returned to Monaco, Grace was pregnant with her first child, Princess Caroline, who was born nine months and four days after her royal wedding in January 1957. Today on the show we welcome back author J. Randy Taraborrelli and induct him into the elite I’d Rather Be Reading second timers club. He was on the show way back in February 2022 discussing his book Jackie, Ethel, Joan, about life as a Kennedy wife. In addition to writing extensively about the Kennedys—Jackie in particular—he has also written biographies on Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Beyonce, the Hiltons, the Bushes, and more. He’s endlessly interesting to talk to, and today we’re digging into his book Once Upon a Time: Behind the Fairytale of Princess Grace and Prince Rainier, which I think is the definitive book on not just Grace, but her marriage, too. It turns out the story of Grace and Rainier is a fairytale, but maybe not in the way you might think. Once Upon a Time: Behind the Fairytale of Princess Grace and Prince Rainier by J. Randy Taraborrelli

There are no two ways around this fact: today’s conversation is tough. It’s really, really tough. Today, April 20, 2024, marks 25 years since the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colorado. I woke up this morning and read an article in People magazine about Frank DeAngelis, who was the principal at Columbine at the time of the shooting. In the article, DeAngelis said that every single morning, he wakes up and says the names of those killed in that day’s horrible events. He said he almost died twice that day, and, in his words, “For whatever reason God spared me that day. So I need to try to help others.” I will take a page from Principal DeAngelis and begin this episode by saying the names of the 12 students and one teacher killed that day: Cassie Bernall, Steven Curnow, Corey DePooter, Kelly Fleming, Matt Kechter, Daniel Mauser, Danny Rohrbough, Dave Sanders, Rachel Scott, Isaiah Shoels, John Tomlin, Lauren Townsend, and Kyle Velasquez. Thirteen people who woke up on this morning 25 years ago and headed into school for what they probably imagined would be a typical Tuesday—and they never came home. Today on the show I have Dave Cullen, who wrote the definitive book on the Columbine massacre, simply titled Columbine, in 2009, 10 years after the attack happened. It took Dave a full decade to write this masterpiece, and he followed it up with a book about the Parkland school shooting, simply titled Parkland, in 2019. Dave’s Columbine book has a new edition and we talk about that in today’s episode. You can feel Dave’s passion for a topic he spent a full decade writing about oozing throughout this conversation. I was 12 years old and in the sixth grade on April 20, 1999, when perpetrators Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot and killed 12 fellow classmates and a teacher at the school. The massacre was also an attempted bombing that failed, and 10 of the 12 students killed were in the school library, the epicenter of the attack, where Harris and Klebold also killed themselves at the massacre’s end. When it happened, Columbine was the deadliest mass school shooting at a K-12 school in U.S. history; Harris and Klebold had been planning their attack for at least a year and planned for it to be primarily a bombing attack, and secondarily a shooting attack. When the bombs they’d built failed to detonate, they began shooting. Their motive remains inconclusive, but Dave and I get into the “why” of it all in our conversation today. Its aftermath has unfortunately spawned dozens of copycat killings, called “the Columbine effect,” and the word “Columbine” itself has become a word symbolizing school shootings. The attack took place from 11:19 a.m. to 12:08 p.m., culminating in the suicides of Harris and Klebold. In 2007, the Columbine Memorial opened to the public, and two years later, in 2009, Dave’s book came out. Dave is considered the nation’s foremost authority on Columbine, and his book covers two major storylines: the killers’ evolution leading up to the attack, and the survivors’ struggles with its aftermath after it happened. Chapters alternate between those two stories, and the book spent eight weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and won numerous awards, drawing comparisons to Truman Capote’s classic In Cold Blood and Ann Rule’s The Stranger Beside Me. This conversation is a difficult one, but necessary.   Columbine by Dave Cullen The audiobook is also available “Confronting: Columbine” podcast

On April 19, 1995—29 years ago tomorrow—at 9:02 a.m., a fertilizer truck bomb exploded outside of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Fueled by anti-government sentiment—and specifically angered by the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, Ruby Ridge in 1992, and the Waco siege exactly two years to the day earlier in 1993—the blast killed 168 and injured 680. Prior to September 11, 2001, the bombing was the deadliest act of terrorism in U.S. history and remains to this day the deadliest act of domestic terrorism our country has ever seen. The bomb destroyed more than one-third of the building—which ultimately had to be demolished—and damaged 324 other buildings, causing an estimated $652 million in damages. Forensic evidence quickly linked McVeigh and Nichols to the bombing, and within days, both were charged. On that April 19, McVeigh detonated a Ryder truck in front of the building; Nichols had assisted with the bomb’s preparation. McVeigh and Nichols had met in 1988 during basic training for the Army and were both tried and convicted in 1997; McVeigh was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001, and Nichols is currently serving life in prison. The victims of the bombing ranged in age from three months old to 73 years old and included three pregnant women; 19 of the victims were babies and children, many of whom were in the building’s day care center. Today on the show we honor the victims of this senseless attack by talking to Jeffrey Toobin, author of the definitive book on the bombing, 2023’s Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism, and the host of the excellent and brand-new podcast Homegrown: OKC. In both works, Toobin draws parallels between the Oklahoma City bombing and January 6, 2021, writing that this study of the Oklahoma City bombing is “Not just a glimpse of the past, but a warning about the future.” It’s a conversation you won’t want to miss.   Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism by Jeffrey Toobin Homegrown: OKC podcast

On April 15, 1912, the RMS Titanic—a British ocean liner operated by the White Star Line—sank in the North Atlantic Ocean after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City. The loss of life was devastating—of the 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, about 1,500 died, making the Titanic the deadliest sinking of a single ship up to that time, 112 years ago. Titanic had aboard her some of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as hundreds of immigrants seeking a new life in the United States and Canada. The Titanic was deemed “unsinkable,” which perhaps accounted for its disturbing lack of lifeboats. The ship was capable of having 48 lifeboats aboard; it only had 20 in actuality. Of those 20 lifeboats, 1,178 lives could have been saved in them, roughly half of the number of passengers on board. When the Titanic sank, the lifeboats lowered were only filled up to an average of 60 percent, which has always troubled me. She set off on her maiden voyage on Wednesday, April 10, 1912, and was due to arrive at New York Pier 59 one week later, on April 17. As played out in the blockbuster 1997 film Titanic directed by James Cameron and starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, you can see that the ship was the lap of luxury. At 11:40 p.m. on April 14, lookout Frederick Fleet spotted an iceberg immediately ahead, and alerted the bridge. First Officer William Murdoch ordered the Titanic to steer around the iceberg and the engines to be reversed, but it was too late. The starboard side of the ship struck the iceberg, creating a series of holes below the waterline, allowing water to rush in. It soon became clear that the ship was doomed. Between 2:10 and 2:15 a.m., a little over two-and-a-half hours after the Titanic struck the iceberg, her rate of sinking increased suddenly as the boat deck went underwater; as her stern rose out of the water, exposing the propellers, the ship broke into two. The bow was now underwater and the stern remained afloat and buoyant for a few minutes longer, rising to a nearly, and terrifyingly, vertical angle with hundreds of people still clinging to it, before foundering at 2:20 a.m. All of the remaining passengers and crew were flung into water at a temperature of 28 degrees Fahrenheit, or -2 degrees Celsius. Only five thrown into the frigid waters were helped into the lifeboats, though the lifeboats had room for almost 500 more souls. Women and children survived the disaster at rates of about 75 percent and 50 percent, respectively; because of the “women and children first” policy, only 20 percent of the men aboard made it out alive. Today on the show I have one of my favorite interview subjects ever: Gareth Russell, the author of 2019’s The Ship of Dreams: The Sinking of the Titanic and the End of the Edwardian Era. As you’ll hear, he is an expert on the Titanic, and there’s no one better to honor those lives lost and to remember her than him; to me, anyway, this is the absolute definitive book on the Titanic—no questions asked. The Ship of Dreams: The Sinking of the Titanic and the End of the Edwardian Era by Gareth Russell

Welcome to this special fiction episode of I’d Rather Be Reading—specifically part two in my latest fiction subgenre obsession: royal family fiction. We’ve already had Katharine McGee on the show of the four-part American Royals series, and we will later have the writing duo behind The Royal We and The Heir Affair; today we have the writing duo behind The Royal Game, my latest royal family fiction favorite. (I’d also throw Red, White, and Royal Blue onto this list, as well.) It is a subgenre that is growing and growing in popularity, and not surprisingly, considering how ubiquitous the royal family has become in culture, especially lately. Today you get the chance to meet Linda Keir, a writing duo who has now written four books together and has been writing together since 2016. Linda Keir is a portmanteau of Linda Joffe Hull and Keir Graff, both of whom have successful writing careers on their own and as a team. The Royal Game—which came out on January 30 of this year—is their first foray into royal family fiction, but hopefully not their last. I won’t give too much away, but the loose plot of The Royal Game involves the love story between American pop singer Jennie Jenson and Prince Hugh of England, the heir to the throne. Someone is determined to keep Jennie from becoming a princess, and to have the happy ending to her fairytale, Jennie will have to play “the royal game.” Not everyone is excited about the prospect of an American princess, apparently. Jennie finds parallels between what’s happening to her and Hugh’s mother, Princess Penelope, who died in a mysterious plane crash. (Don’t worry, I ask Linda and Keir if my theories that Jennie and Hugh and Penelope are based on Meghan Markle and Prince Harry and Princess Diana are true.) Jennie wants to know if Penelope is murdered—and worries she might be next. It’s a thrilling mystery, a romantic love story, and really, really good. Today on the show we talk about their process of being a writing team, what they think about the royal family and if they follow it outside of their work on this latest book, why they chose to get into the royal family fiction subgenre, and what, exactly, “the royal game” is, anyway.   The Royal Game by Linda Keir We also mention On Duty with the Queen by Dickie Arbiter on the show!

When it comes to fashion journalists, the crème de la crème is my guest today, Teri Agins. Today’s episode is celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Teri’s book Hijacking the Runway: How Celebrities Are Stealing the Spotlight from Fashion Designers, which speaks to how celebrity interfaces with fashion and how fashion interfaces with celebrity. There used to be a delineation between fashion designers and fashion and supermodels on the one hand, and then celebrities, like actors and actresses and musicians, on the other. On the show today, Teri talks about when those lines started to blur, and when celebrities could no longer be one note—in addition to being, say, an actor, or a musician, or what have you, seemingly every celebrity now has a perfume, or a beauty line, or a fashion collection, or some kind of alcoholic beverage, or some (if not many) entrepreneurial ventures. It’s almost like being an actor is just the launchpad to becoming a multihyphenate and a mogul. It wasn’t always this way, believe it or not. In today’s episode we talk about how so-called “traditional” fashion designers feel about celebrities like Jessica Simpson, Victoria Beckham, and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen (of the brand The Row) infiltrating the fashion industry; when celebrities decided to not just endorse products but own them; the magic formula as to why some celebrity fashion brands take off and some flop; how the emergence of reality stars changed the game even further; and how the pendulum swings both ways, as some designers are coming to prominence or deepening their fame on reality television as well (think, in particular, Project Runway). Let me tell you about the powerhouse that is Teri: she worked as a writer for Fairchild Publications in the 1970s, and after she and her former husband moved to Brazil for five years, she worked as a freelance writer for The New York Times and Time. In 1984, she became a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where she wrote a business column; in 1989, Teri was assigned to develop the fashion beat for The Wall Street Journal, covering fashion from a business perspective. She was named senior special writer in 1995 and retired from The Wall Street Journal in 2009 but continues to freelance for them, including writing the popular fashion column “Ask Teri.” She has also written for Vogue, Town & Country, Essence, Harper’s Bazaar, and more. In addition to Hijacking the Runway, Teri also wrote the book The End of Fashion: How Marketing Changed the Clothing Game Forever. Quick aside—in the middle of our conversation, New York City experienced a 4.8 magnitude earthquake—remember that last Friday?—and, true to the force of nature Teri is, she didn’t even bat an eye. I can’t wait for you to meet this dynamic woman and learn from her expertise. Hijacking the Runway: How Celebrities Are Stealing the Spotlight from Fashion Designers by Teri Agins

Welcome to season 11 of I’d Rather Be Reading! This season we will, of course, continue to cover the latest and greatest nonfiction books, but we’re also going to focus on many events that gripped the nation past and present—like the O.J. Simpson murders (which happened 30 years ago this June), the Oklahoma City bombing, Columbine (which happened 25 years ago this month), and JFK Jr.’s plane crash, which is marking its twenty-fifth anniversary this year. Today on the show we’re digging into a true crime case that’s much more recent: the quadruple homicide of four University of Idaho students on November 13, 2022. Today on the show we are speaking with J. Reuben Appelman about his book While Idaho Slept: The Hunt for Answers in the Murder of Four College Students, released last October. He is from Idaho and has lived there for 25 years; you’ll hear him talk about how his daughter attended U of I and how unlikely even one murder, let alone four, is in the idyllic town of Moscow. He is a private investigator and his true crime memoir, The Kill Jar, inspired the popular Hulu docuseries Children of the Snow. Stick around after the show for a book pick about the Murdaugh murders, one connected to Nirvana (Kurt Cobain committed suicide 30 years ago on April 8), and two nonfiction picks based off of television shows premiering on Hulu and Apple TV+ in the coming week.   While Idaho Slept: The Hunt for Answers in the Murder of Four College Students by J. Reuben Appleman   Plus two entertainment picks! Read: Under the Bridge by Rebecca Godfrey | Watch: Under the Bridge on Hulu, out on April 17   Read: A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America by Stacy Schiff | Watch: Franklin on Apple TV+, out on April 12

Welcome to the season 10 finale, friends! What a great season it has been, with so much more in store in the forthcoming season 11. Today on the show we’re talking about a topic close to my heart as I look to undertake this project this year: getting signed to a literary agent and getting signed to a book deal. I realize this is a podcast for readers, but I also realize that many of you are writers, and maybe you’ve been feeling the nudge too to write that book, whether fiction or nonfiction, that you just can’t get out of your head. The process of getting a book deal is totally overwhelming, but thankfully now we have Lucinda Halpern’s Get Signed: Find an Agent, Land a Book Deal, and Become a Published Author, which walks you step-by-step through the cumbersome process in a way that is easy to understand, digestible, and, most importantly, doable! If you have that idea tugging and gnawing at you, listeners, and it just won’t go away, it’s time to write that book, whatever that book is, and here’s your sign. Lucinda’s book walks us all the way through how to do it; this mystifying process isn’t shrouded in complexity anymore, and through her six-step method you’ll close the book able to write a query letter that gets an agent’s attention, build an effective marketing platform, and go on to write the book you’re meant to write. In today’s conversation we talk about whether the process of finding a literary agent is different for fiction and nonfiction writers, red flags to look out for when choosing an agent, whether an agent is absolutely necessary to land a book deal and impart a boost of confidence for all of you, like me, who think maybe you aren’t good enough or ready to do this. Guess what? You are!   Get Signed: Find an Agent, Land a Book Deal, and Become a Published Author by Lucinda Halpern   Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment without Burnout by Cal Newport

There is no better person to close out March and Women’s History Month on I’d Rather Be Reading than Sarah Ditum, author of the new book Toxic: Women, Fame, and the Tabloid 2000s, which came out on January 23. Through the lens of nine of the biggest female celebrities of the 2000s—Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Aaliyah, Janet Jackson, Amy Winehouse, Kim Kardashian, Chyna (the professional wrestler), and Jennifer Aniston, Sarah’s book and this conversation takes a look back at how, well, toxic it was to be a female celebrity in the aughts. As we talk about on the show, with different celebrity magazines picking apart women’s bodies and using women as punching bags, that gave permission for regular people like all of us permission to do the same, and—as Sarah acutely points out—do that not the least of which to ourselves. If you were young and female and coming into your own during this time period as I was, it was not easy, and I’m sure it was the same if you were young and male, too. Celebrity culture in the early aughts was an amalgamation of celebrity sex tapes, tabloids fed by paparazzi willing to do anything to get the shot, Perez Hilton and the internet on its worst behavior, rampant fat-shaming and slut-shaming, and revenge porn. This was the time before all of this was completely unacceptable—sure, it was frowned upon (sometimes), but not unacceptable like it is today, or at least like it is inching towards today. And perhaps no one was treated worse in all of the aforementioned regards than the female celebrity, in a decade where a female celebrity in crisis was the absolute center of attention. Three of the nine women profiled in Sarah’s book—Aaliyah, Amy Winehouse, and Chyna—didn’t survive until present day. This era really was toxic and proof that we can and should always do better in the way we treat women. I’m thankful to Sarah for writing this book and for being here today.   Toxic: Women, Fame, and the Tabloid 2000s by Sarah Ditum + check this book out about the power of women working together: Huddle: How Women Unlock Their Collective Power by Brooke Baldwin

Well, we started our Women in Power series for Women’s History Month with a legendary editor-in-chief and we’re going to end the series with one, too. Today on the show I have Kate Betts, former editor-in-chief at Harper’s Bazaar, a longtime colleague of Anna Wintour’s at Vogue, and the author of one of my all-time favorite memoirs, My Paris Dream: An Education in Style, Slang, and Seduction in the Great City on the Seine. In addition to My Paris Dream, Kate also wrote the book Everyday Icon: Michelle Obama and the Power of Style and reveals in our chat today that she’s working on a third book, which I will devour when it comes out. I first interacted with Kate when I interviewed her for an oral history piece I did in Vanity Fair on Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s wedding dress back in 2021—I love that piece, and I’ll link it below. Of course, I’d known of Kate and her work for 25 years prior to us speaking three years ago. After graduating from Princeton, one of Kate’s first big roles was at Fairchild Publications’ European office in Paris, a period of her career that she calls essential to her development as a fashion journalist. Kate was a features writer for the Paris bureau of Fairchild, overseeing fashion coverage for Women’s Wear Daily, W, and M magazines. In this role, she also helped launch W Europe. After two years, she became the bureau chief, and in 1991, she left Paris and Fairchild for New York City and Conde Nast, where she took over as fashion news director at Vogue. She created Vogue’s Index section, and in 1999 took over as editor-in-chief at Harper’s Bazaar. In a testament to Kate’s ferocity, three days after starting at Bazaar, she gave birth to her first child. Kate was a new mom, and the youngest editor ever at America’s oldest fashion magazine. She hired two writers I adore, Bret Easton Ellis and Lynn Hirschberg, and after leaving Bazaar in 2001, Kate freelanced for The New York Times, specifically its Styles section. In 2004, she became the editor of Time’s Style and Design section, and she remains a contributing editor there still today. In addition to freelancing and writing books (as if that’s not enough!), she reports on fashion for CNN, and today we talk about her formative career experiences, her books, what she’d tell her younger self, and she leaves us with incredible book recommendations to add to our “To Be Read” pile.   By Kate Betts: My Paris Dream: An Education in Style, Slang, and Seduction in the Great City on the Seine Everyday Icon: Michelle Obama and the Power of Style   “25 Years Later, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s Wedding Dress Still Stuns,” written by me for Vanity Fair and featuring Kate as a source   + Kate’s picks Devotion by Dani Shapiro A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories by Joan Silber The Bee Sting by Paul Murray The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese Mary Karr collection   + more picks from me! Women, Food, and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything by Geneen Roth Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain