Price of fame

Traces the story of the playwright, Congresswoman, and first American female to be appointed to a major ambassadorial position abroad, covering such topics as her advocacy of women's equality and the deep personal losses that shaped her life. This concluding volume of the life of an exceptionally brilliant polymath chronicles Luce's progress from her days in Congress. Elected in 1943, she became the only female member of the House Military Affairs Committee, toured the Western Front and visited concentration camps within days of their liberation. Attracting nationwide attention, she lobbied for relaxed immigration policies for Asians and displaced European Jews, as well as equal rights for women and blacks. Following Hiroshima, she became a passionate advocate of nuclear arms control. But in 1946, she gave up her House seat, convinced that politics was "the refuge of second-class minds." She soon emerged as a formidable television personality, campaigning so spectacularly for Eisenhower that he made her ambassador to Italy. She took an uncompromising attitude toward Italy's Communist Party, then was stricken by a mysterious case of poisoning that the CIA kept secret. She went on to become a prolific journalist and magnetic public speaker, as well as a playwright, screenwriter, pioneer scuba diver, early experimenter in psychedelic drugs, and grande dame of the GOP in the Reagan era. Tempestuously married to Henry Luce, the publisher of Time Inc., she endured his infidelities while pursuing her own, and remained a practiced vamp well into old age. In later years she strengthened friendships with countless celebrities who visited her lavish Honolulu retreat. In 1973, she was appointed by Nixon to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a position she continued to hold in the Ford and Reagan administrations. Her death at 84 ended a life that qualifies Clare Boothe Luce for the title of "Woman of the Century."--Publisher description.