Drama was the watchword of 2024, if Vanity Fair’s most read stories of the year are any indication. There’s family drama, frenemy drama, forbidden-love drama, true-crime drama, political drama, and even some tech drama. Donald Trump is mostly absent from these headlines—sick of hearing about him, are we?—but his allies Rudy Giuliani and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made the list, in both cases with the help of family members appalled by their MAGA conversions. Tim Cook gave Nick Bilton an exclusive preview of Apple’s massive, unorthodox bet on the Vision Pro. Ryan Murphy’s Capote vs. the Swans propelled Chris Murphy’s (no relation) deft explainer onto the charts, along with a choice cut from Sally Bedell Smith’s 1990 biography of William S. Paley, whose wife, Babe, was portrayed in the series by Naomi Watts. You also devoured one epic crime story (Julie Miller’s astonishingly all-access profile of murder defendant Karen Read), a handful of fraught romance sagas (et tu, Cormac McCarthy?!), and, in a surprise showing at number one, a departing Queer Eye cast member’s unflinchingly candid account of—what else?—all the D-R-A-M-A on set. The holiday season is the perfect time to catch up on any of these instant classics that you may have missed.
New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani with his daughter Caroline Giuliani.By Rick Maiman/Sygma/Getty Images.
By Caroline Giuliani
“Nothing I have experienced prepared me for the very public and relentless implosion of my father’s life,” writes Caroline Giuliani, announcing her support for Kamala Harris.
CEO Tim Cook pictured for the first time wearing the Apple Vision Pro, in his Cupertino, California office.Photograph by Norman Jean Roy.
By Nick Bilton
Inside Apple Park, the tech giant’s CEO talks about the genesis of a “mind-blowing” new device that could change the way we live and work. A-list directors are already on board—“My experience was religious,” says James Cameron—but will your average iPhone user drop $3,500 on a headset?
Photograph by Richard Avedon.
By Sally Bedell Smith
When Babe Cushing, the most captivating of “the fabulous Cushing sisters,” married CBS chairman Bill Paley, her glamour and his power made them the golden couple—in New York society there was nothing beyond the Paleys. But Babe became her husband’s most precious possession, slavishly fulfilling his whims while her family disintegrated around her. And her aura of perfection—for three decades she was the ideal and envy of all her peers—belied a deepening pain and resentment. Sally Bedell Smith, in this excerpt from her biography of William S. Paley, In All His Glory, records the high price of being Babe.
Karen Read at her former home in Mansfield, Massachusetts.Photograph by Diana Markosian.
By Julie Miller
After John O’Keefe was found, near death, in the snowy front yard of a fellow Boston cop, his girlfriend was arrested. As Karen Read’s second murder trial looms, she’s ready to talk about what she says really happened. Read “Part 2” of this story, including new details that have emerged in the Karen Read murder case, here.
