The Transom

On the evening of Wednesday, Nov. 12, Style.com’s executive fashion director, Candy Pratts Price, was standing in the bar of Bergdorf Goodman’s seventh-floor restaurant wearing a black Calvin Klein minidress and black bejeweled Edmundo Castillo ankle boots, surrounded by 200 of her nearest and dearest, there to celebrate her new book, American Fashion Accessories.

“I’m so happy that people came out,” said Ms. Pratts Price in her trademark throaty voice as dermatologist and socialite Lisa Airan waited expectantly to greet her. “It’s not all doom and gloom. We got what we wanted—a new regime!”

She was speaking of the president-elect, for whom she’d shilled in several of her popular animated stream-of-consciousness video-blogs, or CandyCasts.  read more »

At socialite Allison Sarofim's annual Halloween party last Saturday, Oct. 25, the theme was Japanese anime. Female dancers in purple wigs and revealing electro-violet garments swayed to the music on pedestals. A young woman wearing skimpy lingerie and a giant head of a Japanese comic-book character with fake hair reaching down to her rear was placed atop the mantelpiece and instructed to stay put. Another woman in a metallic unitard and extraterrestrial headgear walked around with a mini-buffet of Japanese candy. And the male waiters, passing out just-made sushi and cocktails, were topless.

Ms. Sarofim, who relocated to New York seven years ago from Houston, is the daughter of Egyptian-born financier Fayez Sarofim, known on Wall Street as “the Sphinx.  read more »

In early July, Julia Frakes, a fashion blogger at Paper Magazine, arrived at the Christian Lacroix couture show in Paris with her mother, Jane Alperin. Ms. Frakes wore an $8,000 floral Balenciaga dress from the spring 2008 collection that resembles feminized body armor. She posed for photos with Vogue editor at large André Leon Talley, who struck up a conversation. The next day, Women's Wear Daily ran item called “Who's That Girl?”

 “I found that whole thing completely hilarious,” recalled Ms. Frakes last week. “I was just trying to find something to wear that day and it was, like, the only dress I can find.  read more »

At the Whitney Museum Gala on Monday, Oct. 20, gallerist Mary Boone told the Transom she has been through three economic downturns: the first when she opened her gallery in 1977; another in the late ’80s; and finally a third directly following 9/11. And so the petite Ms. Boone, whose 5-foot-1-inch frame and tame, pitch-black hair make her seem deceptively mousy, is not particularly concerned this time around.

“In November of ’89, only 20 percent of works were selling at auctions,” Ms. Boone said. “But the works then went on the market at the right prices. So it’s all a correction.  read more »

“I was one of Geoffrey’s oddball friends,” said Paper magazine founder Kim Hastreiter on Monday evening at the Diane von Furstenberg store in the meatpacking district, where she sat behind a long desk signing copies of her new book, Geoffrey Beene: An American Fashion Rebel, for guests like Erin Fetherston, Yigal Azrouël and Narciso Rodriguez.

“He was a very fancy uptown designer showing at the Pierre when we first met, and I was like this ragged downtown artist with no money,” recalled Ms. Hastreiter. “I remember he invited me to one of his shows and sat me in the front row with all the rich ladies and I thought, ‘What am I doing here?’ But he befriended me and I got to know him in this other way.  read more »

Two weeks ago, Maxim deputy editor Chris Wilson published a short essay on sex addiction in Page Six Magazine. “Humans are as addicted to sex as we are to biological imperatives like eating, breathing and taking long bubble baths while listening to soft jazz,” it began. A few lines down things took a turn to the dark side: “The other night I was flying on American Airlines, which recently began offering unfiltered Internet access, and the guy next to me was either pleasuring himself to online porn, or whittling something under his blanket. Thankfully, I had a copy of Departures to shield my face, but it was still pretty uncomfortable.  read more »

In a year of economic uncertainty and political anxiety, the Transom wondered what New Yorkers would be wearing come Halloween. Would gaggles of frazzled stock brokers, Sarah Palins and Barack Obamas, and Ashley Duprés and Eliot Spitzers flood the Central Park Conservancy Halloween Ball, Allison Sarofim’s costume party, and Suzanne Bartsch’s bash? And surely some couples will go as Samantha Ronson and Lindsay Lohan. (The real Ms. Lohan and Ms. Ronson, meanwhile, reportedly plan to dress up as Todd and Sarah Palin.)

Socialite and interior designer Celerie Kemble is dressing as an FLDS wife. She described her outfit thusly: “Leg of mutton sleeves, pale blue long starched cotton dress, white socks, running sneakers, and round Harry Potter glasses.  read more »

Call him the Teflon Don of New York nightlife!

As suspected by nightlife blog Down by the Hipster and others, nightclub impresario Noah Tepperberg’s Marquee was not shut down earlier this summer solely because of a water main break. Documents from the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control filed on July 8 charge that a months-long undercover sting yielded seven different occurrences of “storage, possession, use or trafficking of a controlled substance” at the club, and one instance of “storage, possession, use or trafficking of marijuana.”

The alleged body of evidence resulted in charges against the club owners, Noah Tepperberg and Jason Strauss, for failing “to exercise adequate supervision over the conduct of the licensed business,” and on July 18 an emergency summary order of suspension of their liquor license was put in effect.  read more »

When reached by phone the other day at her new apartment at Greenwich and Jane streets, socialite and actress Annie Churchill apologized for her scratchy voice. She had been out until 2 a.m. the previous night, she explained—a party for artist David Foote on Pine Street, a quick stop at Marquee, dinner, then Socialista. “I only drank water and an energy drink,” she said, adding that she quit drinking alcohol two months ago to focus on her new online venture, which Ms. Churchill first told us about during New York Fashion Week. Since then, she said, “I find that I’m exerting so much more energy when I’m out networking that I end up getting a sore throat.  read more »

On Monday evening, a passel of young women were observed entering the Chelsea Hotel and telling the front desk attendant that they were going to the penthouse apartment of the photographer and documentary filmmaker Sam Bassett. Holding court in Mr. Bassett's rooftop garden was the party photographer (and iPhone magazine publisher!) Patrick McMullan and the artist Laurie Ogle. The pair, who dated in the '80s, are the parents of Liam McMullan, who was celebrating his 21st birthday that evening with close friends and family. (A larger party is planned for later this month at the Marc Ecko showroom.)

Patrick buzzed about, snapping photos and making introductions between Liam's old friends from middle school and new friends like Ally Hilfiger.  read more »

The Daily Transom is not easily starstruck. But when Benicio Del Toro offered to "wine and dine" us in atonement for allowing someone to interrupt our conversation after the Monday evening screening of his new film, Che, directed by Steven Soderbergh, we must admit we had a ... moment. After all, the food and drinks at Plaza Athenee were free--it would be simple!

Fortunately, by the time he turned his attention back to us, we had regained our composure. What had the person who had approached him wanted to know? "He wanted to know how I lost weight for the movie."

How had he?

"That's a secret, it's a mystery!"

Well, then how had he gained it back?

"That's a secret.  read more »

“I’m carrying Sarah Palin’s baby!” the actress Caroline Rhea was telling guests while rubbing her pregnant belly at a lunch for comedian Bill Maher’s new documentary, Religulous, at Brasserie Ruhlmann on Monday, Sept. 29.

The film, the title of which combines the words “religion” and “ridiculous,” is a satirical take on various faiths, directed by Larry Charles, better known for his work on Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

“I thought it was very instructive,” said The View host Joy Behar. “I grew up Catholic like Bill—communion, confirmation, the whole thing—and even if you’re a religious person, you watch this and you think, ‘I have to question a few things.  read more »

Just when the era of exclusivity seemed to have peaked in this town, Socialista mastermind Armin Amiri has decided to open an all-night diner—with a guest list from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m.

“It’s gonna be upscale diner food, like Florent, but a couple notches up food-wise,” said Mr. Amiri, who is a former Bungalow 8 doorman and a working actor.

The yet-to-be-named diner will open in the ground-floor space that formerly housed Café Socialista, which Mr. Amiri closed in June.

The Café wasn’t working, Mr. Amiri says, because the food was “almost a Jean-Georges style,” he said.  read more »

The city was quiet on Monday evening, Sept. 29. Most New Yorkers were either celebrating Rosh Hashanah or feeling too down on the economy to venture out for a social gathering. But on the third floor of Christie’s in Rockefeller Center, socialite and interior designer Celerie Kemble welcomed friends to a private party hosted by Elle Décor in honor of her new textile collection for Schumacher.

“Other than the whole market-falling-to-pieces thing, this is sort of the perfect day,” Ms. Kemble told the Transom. “Standing in the room tonight, looking around, it’s like seeing candy on the walls!”

Ms. Kemble’s patterns and textiles were displayed on the walls of Christie’s like works of art.  read more »

This year’s New York Film Festival opened Friday night with a screening of French director Laurent Cantet’s The Class.

The film, which has already won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, focuses on a multicultural classroom in Paris’ rapidly gentrifying 20th Arrondissement. With the exception of the role of the teacher, who is played by the author of the memoir that inspired the movie, the cast is made up of a group of amateur teenage actors, most of whom had traveled to New York for the festival.

Maybe it was the serious, relatively low-profile film—The Darjeeling Limited was last year's selection, and The Queen opened the year before that—or the rain or the presidential debates on TV, but the red carpet was particularly quiet.  read more »

Doubles, the exclusive private club in the basement of the Sherry-Netherland Hotel at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street, reopened all spruced up on the evening of Wednesday, Sept. 17. The carpet was new, as were the wall coverings and the crocodile banquettes. Everything was in a rose salmon color. “You glow,” said Doubles chairwoman Wendy Carduner. “Everyone looks superb here. This is the most complementary color.”

As party guests began to trickle in, interior designer Tom Britt, the dapper 68-year-old who started working on the revivification last February with his associate Valentino Samsonadze, was holding court by the dance floor.  read more »

“He’s a one-off persona,” Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman told the Transom after Clay Felker’s memorial at the New York Society for Ethical Culture on Monday, Sept. 22. Mr. Zuckerman was hoofing it up four flights of stairs to a more intimate celebration for Mr. Felker on the fourth floor. “He’s the only person I would’ve walked up four flights for,” said Mr. Zuckerman, catching his breath.

Sir David Frost, acting as master of ceremonies, joked that if attendees wandered all the way to Elaine’s, they’d gone too far.

The guests at the public event were just the sort of high-low, insider-outsider, creator-enthusiast mix Mr.  read more »

The Metropolitan Opera’s opening-night gala—held this year on Monday, Sept. 22—is one of the premiere fall benefits. It precedes other major society happenings like the Whitney Museum of Art gala on Oct. 20, the New York Public Library Lions Benefit on Nov. 3 and the Lincoln Center gala on Nov. 10. But while tickets to all of these have already sold out, some guests wondered how the big society benefits will continue to fare as financial anxiety escalates.

Julie Macklowe, portfolio manager for Sigma Capital Management and recent Vogue It Girl, arrived in punk-rock-influenced, spiked and studded 6-inch Rodarte heels that she exposed for the cameras from under her Louis Vuitton dress.  read more »

For years, “that girl with the headband” could mean only one person in New York—25-year-old socialite Arden Wohl, whose identity has become intertwined with her fondness for elaborate headdresses.

But as of late, this accessory has moved onto the preciously disheveled heads of alterna-celebrities like British socialite import Peaches Geldolf and Nylon magazine darling Cory Kennedy; there’s even a Marc Jacobs shopgirl starting her own line of headbands, and it’s morphed into a cross between the flapper band and a pirate’s head scarf tied not underneath the hair, but right on top like a hippie crown.

At New York Fashion Week, 19-year-old Ms.  read more »

The new warmhearted comedy Ghost Town, starring Ricky Gervais and Téa Leoni, has all kinds of comforting messages about life and death. Turns out if you get hit by a bus but still have unfinished business on Earth, you get to resolve all your issues with loved ones before a beam of light appears and you fade out blissfully on the way to the next world.

After a Cinema Society screening on Monday, Sept. 15, everyone at the Soho Grand’s courtyard restaurant seemed under the spell of this sweet, hilarious movie. So we decided to bum everyone out by asking if Armageddon was right around the corner.  read more »

On Monday, Sept. 15—the day the Dow dropped 504 points—some of the well-heeled guests at a party for Graydon Carter’s Vanity Fair: The Portraits, A Century of Iconic Images seemed a little rattled. “I think it’s great, I think it should happen every day,” said IAC chairman Barry Diller, who recently split his company in five parts. “Yes, I’m joking. Sorry,” he barked as he quickly excused himself. 

Others were more sanguine. “I think it’s a correction. If you take the long-term view of things, the ups and downs don’t seem so dramatic,” said svelte Vanity Fair contributor Amy Fine Collins. “I remember in 1987, there was this big  read more »

On the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 16, Randy Weiner, managing partner of the Box, was on the phone with the Transom, hours after a late-night District 3 Community Board meeting gone “horribly wrong.” The six-member board—which covers the Lower East Side and Chinatown—voted unanimously to deny the burlesque theater’s application to renew its liquor license (an official recommendation to the State Liquor Authority will not be ratified until the full board meeting on Sept. 23).

The Box, where tables sell for roughly $1,000, opened to the public on Valentine’s Day 2007 and, Mr. Weiner said, “does a steady and growing business”; he said their shows cost upward of $50,000 a week and the club now employs 80 people.  read more »

As of last spring, the Manhattan social set began to whisper that the marriage of Larry and Denise Wohl, parents of headbanded socialite Arden, was over. Recently, Mr. Wohl, a real estate developer, has been seen about town with another woman.

“Supposedly, he’s been seeing some woman for a while, but I don’t think it’s anybody in the crowd,” said a longtime acquaintance of the couple. “I know [Denise Wohl] isn’t very happy about it. It doesn’t seem like an amicable thing.”

“I would not say that he has a girlfriend, but he was there with a woman,” said another family friend, who recently ran into Mr.  read more »

Last Friday, noted literary agent Ira Silverberg welcomed a son into the world. It is the second child to be born of his seed; the mothers are two, let us say, “literary” women who live in the West Village.

Mr. Silverberg, who this year moved to Sterling Lord Literistic, likes to refer to himself as a father, not a parent. “For years I’ve had one very close friend who always said, ‘When I have a child, I’d like you to think about being the father,’” he told the Transom. “And years later, I was a single man at the time, and she had a girlfriend and they were the people I was spending most of my time with.  read more »

On Monday, Sept. 8, Olympic gold medalist Nastia Liukin arrived at the Gramercy Park Hotel, her parents in tow, for a Vogue/Cole-Haan event honoring the tennis player Maria Sharapova. Ms. Liukin was excited—giddy, almost—but perhaps also a tad intimidated. Dressed in a marbled, off-white bubble dress, Ms. Liukin had attended her first Fashion Week show, Peter Som’s spring 2009 collection, just that morning. While seated in the front row next to Ms. Sharapova, she was introduced to Vogue editor Anna Wintour.

“It was … um … I don’t know,” said Ms. Liukin. “I was just so scared, knowing who she was, but she was very nice.  read more »

At 8:30 p.m. on Monday, September 8, the bi-annual paparazzi bloodbath had already started outside the Marc Jacobs show. Gawkers and cameramen lined Lexington Avenue, which was clogged with town cars, while security guards admitted guests to the Lexington Avenue Armory, a sign that the designer intended to start on time-at 9 p.m. (who could forget the show a year ago, when attendees appearing at the appointed hour were told to "get a drink and come back?").

Inside, the flashbulbs were blinding, accompanied by desperate shouts every time a Kelly Osborne, or a Kim Raver from Lipstick Jungle, or a J. Lo, or a freshly shorn and dyed and pixie-ish Victoria Beckham arrived.

"I'm really a plus one," said bewildered painter John Currin, taking in the scene with wife Rachel Feinstein, an artist and friend of Mr. Jacobs'. "People are better looking," he added, appraising the difference between art and fashion parties. "There's a lot more money, I think, and better-looking women."  read more »

Over the summer, Council of Fashion Designers of America president Diane von Furstenberg sent letters to Fashion Week designers beseeching them to start their shows on time this fall, rather than offer the traditional wait of 40 to 45 minutes.

Ms. von Furstenberg’s edict—coupled with Marc Jacobs’ shocking, almost arrogantly prompt 20-minutes-late start last season, following criticism levied at his more-than-two-hours-tardy start a year ago—raised the possibility of a seismic shift in Fashion Week start times.

Alas, it hasn’t occurred. The Yigal Azrouel show in Chelsea on Friday, Sept. 5, was scheduled for noon, but the lights went down at 12:34. At Rag & Bone later that day, opening model Sasha Pivovarova stalked angrily down the catwalk at 4:36 p.  read more »

Barbara Walters arrived at Cipriani on 42nd St. just before 8 on Friday, Sept. 5, dressed in slimming black pants, a black sequined top, and a droll pair of hot-pink satin heels. Ms. Walters was there to present Billie Jean King—the guest of honor for the International Tennis Hall of Fame's Legends Ball—with the 2008 Eugene L. Scott Award (Mr. Scott was the founder of Tennis Week magazine). Upon spotting her, the Daily Transom attempted to steer the conversation to the 2008 election.

"Oh, I'm not talking about politics tonight!" she said, frowning faintly and shaking her blonde, well-coiffed head. Instead, she discussed her friendship with Ms.  read more »

“While we haven’t pulled in blockbuster ratings, we have helped create an identity for the network—or rather, an identifying show for the network,” Josh Schwartz, the 32-year-old creator of the CW network show Gossip Girl, told the Transom via phone from his office in Burbank, Calif., the other day. To New Yorkers’ alternate delight and horror, the new season of Mr. Schwartz’s show began on Monday evening with guest appearances by Tinsley Mortimer and Jay McInerney, who played Dan Humphrey’s “literary mentor.”

“The challenge last year was when I was telling people, ‘Oh, I have this new show on the CW,’ and they were like, ‘What’s the CW?’”

 read more »

ST. PAUL—His name may sound unfamiliar, but Andrew Breitbart has built a career helping to create the Drudge Report and the Huffington Post, while also overseeing his own news-aggregation site breitbart.com—and becoming prominent in a largely underground movement of conservatives in Hollywood. Next week he plans to launch a new site (www.breitbart.com/bighollywood) that will give voice to this rogue community in the entertainment industry. 

“I don’t have a set goal of saying like, ‘Jean-Claude Van Damme and Donny Osmond are going to be blogging on my site and you’ve got to come in,’” he told the Transom on Monday evening at the Republican National Convention.  read more »

“It’s not like I was raised to the manner born,” said the socialite and author Tatiana Boncompagni on a recent afternoon as she lunched at Bottega del Vino in midtown.

On Sept. 9, Ms. Boncompagni will publish her first novel, Gilding Lily, about a simple girl from Nashville named Lily who is embraced by New York society when she marries a millionaire, then dumped by her fancy friends. Ms. Boncompagni’s publisher, HarperCollins, has marketed her as a descendant of Italian nobility and 16th-century Pope Gregory XIII, but she insists that her background is closer to that of her character’s, as she grew up in South Dakota and Nashville with a mother who left her noble roots behind when she married Ms.  read more »

DENVER—“I think the most interesting thing I’ve seen so far is all the secret deals that have been going on,” said the actor Josh Lucas at the Going Green event hosted by Bank of America on Monday night. The American Psycho star is at the Democratic National Convention, making the rounds of the Creative Coalition circuit of events. “It’s been happening everywhere. ‘I’ll give you two tickets to the J.Lo party, you give me two tickets to see Fergie on Thursday.’ It’s been happening everywhere. It’s like serious drug dealing going on.”

Earlier that day, Mr. Lucas had been in an SUV heading to one of the many events sponsored by the  read more »

On Saturday, Aug. 23, several hundred people gathered at Stone Meadow Farm, an estate in East Hampton where Mariah Carey recently got hitched, to celebrate the 125th birthday of the American Red Cross. Russell Simmons, whose eponymous jewelry line was one of the evening’s sponsors, told us that it had been the summer of Barack Obama, as well as yoga, the environment, PETA, the Humane Society and fund-raisers (his July 19 Art for Life event raised $1.7 million).

Liam McMullan, the 20-year-old son of photographer Patrick McMullan, and Stephanie Wei were sitting nearby. One night earlier this summer, the two were hanging out at 2 a.  read more »

Spotted—also, striped, plaid, and fringed: all said looks were spied Sunday night in a display window at the Henri Bendel flagship on Fifth Avenue. The mannequins, as much as mannequins can be, were less silently bored than articulately, deliberately insouciant: the one on the far left held in her bent left hand a petite Sony Handycam; it was noticeably turned off, and angled at five o'clock, as if the spectators gathered on the sidewalk were obvi(ously) nothing worth committing to tape. Two places to her left, a blond had conjured the year's most fraught sartorial heresy: turquoise thigh-length stockings with color-matched open-toed pumps.  read more »

Last week, on a bench outside the Bonsignor coffee shop on Jane Street, near where she lives ("that way, on the water," she said, motioning west), Elettra Wiedemann—soon-to-be biomedicine graduate student, international Lancôme spokesmodel and daughter of famed Lancôme model Isabella Rossellini—was describing her latest project, a charity website called JustOneFrickinDay.com.

"Originally we thought ‘JustOneDay,'" she explained. "We wanted it to be inspirational but we didn't want it to be-we wanted to give it a little bit of funk, you know? So we put in the frickin because it made people realize that it was very minimal, actually, and that if you pull together you can actually get a lot of stuff done.  read more »

This summer, New York’s best-paid living artist, Brice Marden, and his wife, painter Helen Harrington, have been busy refurbishing the latest addition to his real estate empire: the run-down old hotel he bought in Nevis, the island in the West Indies, in 2006.

“It’s a beautiful old place, but I mean, seriously, who goes to Nevis?” said a source familiar with the layout, which consists of around a dozen cabana huts. “They’ve got all their friends moving there. They’re trying to turn Nevis into the next St. Barths or whatever.

“I think they want to build up the value and then sell it,” the source added, who noted Mr.  read more »

A few weeks ago, at a party for the second Chelsea location of 303 Gallery, a crowd of downtown creative types milled around, outfitted in ’80s Ray Bans and indie rock T-shirts. Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore was the guest DJ, and the Virgins, a New York band of perfectly disheveled young men whose songs have been featured on Gossip Girl, performed onstage next to a pile of rubble. (The gallery was still under construction.) Around 7:30, 26-year-old actress Kirsten Dunst quietly arrived with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Matt Creed. Ms. Dunst, dressed in a cream-colored, polka-dotted ’50s dress that hit just below the knee, roamed around, dodging the cameras.  read more »

On Sunday, Aug. 4, Gregg Cook, an instructor at ZoneHampton, an East Hampton gym frequented by Kelly Ripa, Katie Lee Joel and Marci Klein, was teaching an 8:30 a.m. spin class.

Mr. Cook, who has a sharp nose, chiseled jaw, intimidating biceps and a tattoo of a thunderbird on his forearm, was sitting at the front of the completely full class on a stationary bike in a red muscle T-shirt and Spandex bicycling shorts.

“If you haven’t broken a sweat yet, you have some catching up to do!” Mr. Cook shouted into a microphone piece wrapped around his hairless head.  read more »

Even though the Bridgehampton Polo match on Saturday, Aug. 2, was canceled due to rain, Hamptons socials still tottered onto the muddy fields in flowing white summer dresses and 3-inch heels. The Transom spotted the beautiful Argentine polo player and the face of Polo Ralph Lauren, Nacho Figueras, posing for photos with bevies of giddy ladies.

“It’s a shame because we have people here, but there’s not much for them to watch,” said Mr. Figueras. He wore jeans, flip-flops, a blue button-up shirt and a baseball cap, which covered his lustrous shaggy hair. “One of my goals is to make polo a more well-known sport.  read more »

At the Southampton after-party on Sunday, Aug. 3, for Bottle Shock, a film about the early days of California wine, there was almost nothing to drink—zero wine, no Champagne, no friendly bartenders offering a free whiskey. Novelist and wine columnist Jay McInerney was shmoozing; he and his wife, Anne Hearst, had hosted a dinner for the cast the night before. A few months ago, I asked Mr. McInerney if it was a good idea to sip red wine all day and he said no, Hemingway ran into some trouble doing that.

Finally I got a glass of rosé, and then spotted Eliza Dushku, who plays a sexy barmaid in Bottle Shock.  read more »

"It's a story about a teacher, but it's also a story about how certain children on a certain island are getting through schools seemingly magically, but maybe not so," said the tutor-cum-novelist Anisha Lakhani the other day. Her first book, Schooled, out this week, was inspired by her experiences teaching and tutoring wealthy Manhattan schoolchildren. "I never went into teaching thinking that I was going to write a book about this. But slowly I started into the world of tutoring and I foun