Increasingly heralded for his influence, Slim Aarons has established his place in the pantheon of great postwar photographers. It was Aarons who perfected, if not invented, the environmental portrait while photographing the international elite in their exclusive playgrounds during the jet-set decades of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, carrying out his self-described mission: to document attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places. This luxurious book is the ultimate insider's view of the lifestyles of the wealthy, privileged, and powerful. Aarons's first book in nearly 30 years (his long-out-of-print A Wonderful Time is a collector's item fetching more than $1,000 a copy) is an eagerly anticipated publishing event. Presenting Hollywood royalty, European aristocracy, the grande dames of high society, captains of industry, media moguls, statesmen, and luminaries of various stripes, across a vast geography of opulent and glamorous settings, Slim Aarons's photographs—some 250 of which are included here—define the Beautiful People and document a lost era of style, grace, and grandeur.

Author Bio: Slim Aarons is now acknowledged as one of the most influential photographers of his generation. During World War II he served as a combat photographer for Yank magazine in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. After the war he became a freelance photographer for many magazines including Holiday, Town & Country, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Travel & Leisure, Look, and Life. He lives in Bedford, New York. Frank Zachary, legendary magazine editor, commissioned many of the photographs in this book for Holiday and Town & Country.

Library Journal

Although none of the pictures in these two sumptuous photography books is more than 60 years old, they seem to capture a bygone era that may make readers nostalgic for a world they never inhabited themselves. Aarons was a combat photographer during World War II, but his subsequent freelance work for magazines such as Holiday and Town & Country allowed him to shoot attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places, as he often put it. The photographs in this volume, Aarons's first since A Wonderful Time (o.p.) more than 30 years ago, will make readers feel that they have gone on a holiday themselves. Aarons's famous subjects include David and Nelson Rockefeller, Lilly Pulitzer, Man Ray, and Joan Collins, and everyone and everything looks so pristine that the images resemble those travel posters that dominated advertising in the 1920s and 1930s. O'Neill's world, although just as glamorous as Aarons's, seems a bit more accessible and humorous. The focus of O'Neill's book is celebrity, and celebrity is indeed what we see here, in all of its varying shades-from a young Mick Jagger to a stately Margaret Thatcher. In Aarons's sense of the word, O'Neill is himself an attractive person; he has known many of his subjects personally through the years, and some of them appear in both books. People and places may not look as immaculate here, but it certainly looks like a great deal of fun. Suitable for all larger public and academic libraries with large photography collections (and/or budgets).-Sheila Devaney, Univ. of Georgia Libs., Athens Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.