Shouts And Murmurs About Si

Was Vanity Fair's decision to put a nude, very pregnant Demi Moore on its cover "an enormously positive pushing of the envelope," as former Editor Tina Brown asserts? Or was Si Newhouse's magazine practicing a kind of high-brow striptease-commercially effective but editorially cheap?

Thomas Maier clearly believes the latter, which is ironic, because the run-on subtitle of his new biography reads very much like a Vanity Fair teaser. How could any self-respecting media junkie resist a book called Newhouse: All the Glitter, Power, and Glory of America's Richest Media Empire and the Secretive Man Behind It? Despite the slick Newhouse-style packaging, though, Maier's title accurately captures the strengths and weaknesses of this ambitious portrait.