CONTRIBUTORS

As a member of George magazine’s original editorial staff and later as its executive editor, Richard Blow had a unique window onto the professional and private life of its founder, John F. Kennedy Jr. Not long after Kennedy’s death, in July 1999, Blow handed over the reins of the now defunct monthly, retreated to the Caribbean, and decided to write a book about the boss he had grown to know and admire. “One challenge of writing about an icon like John F. Kennedy Jr. is that everyone feels as if they know him,” Blow says. “I wanted to show the John Kennedy people don’t know.” An excerpt from Blow’s American Son: A Portrait of John F. Kennedy Jr., due out from Henry Holt this month, begins on page 176.

For San Francisco-based journalist John Heilemann, test-riding inventor Dean Kamen’s Segway Human Transporter, the revolutionary people-moving machine that created major buzz last year before its public unveiling, was nothing short of amazing. “It’s one of those rare devices that has about it a certain quality of magic,” says Heilemann, whose article on Kamen starts on page 184. The author of Pride Before the Fall, about the Microsoft anti-trust trial, and an upcoming book about the powers that be in Silicon Valley, entitled The Valley, Heilemann says, “I’ve spent a lot of time with visionaries, engineers, and geeks, and even in that crowd Dean Kamen stands out.”

Some people consider explorers, well, mildly insane. But in Scott Glimmer's opinion, “they are exceptionally inspirational.” Starting on page 190, Gummer (far right) profiles 10 of the world’s most accomplished explorers, such as 96-year-old dogsledder Norman Vaughan (with contributing photography producer Ron Beinner, near left, and contributing photographer Jonas Karlsson). Having written about the pioneers of extreme sports in the June 2001 issue of V.F., Gummer explains, “There is a big difference between adventurers and explorers. Adventurers seek thrills, explorers seek truths.” Something of a seeker himself, Gummer, a father of four, recently took his 11-year-old daughter, Ella, on safari to South Africa.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 56

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 52

She’s just 19, but already Kirsten Dunst is a Hollywood veteran, having performed in some 25 movies. That’s as many as Meg Ryan and Gwyneth Paltrow and nearly as many as Jodie Foster, three other actresses contributing editor Michael Shnayerson has profiled for Vanity Fair. “Certainly Kirsten is much younger, less seasoned, and, in some ways, even naive,” says Shnayerson, “but she shares with the others a seemingly bedrock sense of confidence.” With this month’s release of Spider-Man, he says, Dunst “is about to become a national household name, yet she’s still almost achingly sweet, unspoiled, and fun. You come away wondering how her spirit can possibly survive the experience unscathed.”

The only woman ever to build a large international advertising agency (the fabled Wells Rich Greene) and the first woman ever to float a business on the New York Stock Exchange, Mary Wells Lawrence has always been driven by her belief that a television or print ad should be a theatrical event. In her new book, A Big Life in Advertising, excerpted in this issue beginning on page 206, she describes her extraordinary rise, her jet-age marriage to onetime client Harding Lawrence, and their idyllic life together in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. But don’t mistake her autobiographical impulse for a sign that she’s slowing down. “Stay tuned,” she says. “There is a lot more to come.”

After meeting with an Iraqi defector in the Middle East, V.F. contributing editor and London Observer reporter David Rose reveals new information about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. “Since the U.N. inspectors were thrown out in 1998, Iraq has geared up to try and produce the most deadly kinds of weapons in a big way once more,” says Rose. He also reports on Iraq’s close ties with Hamas, the terrorist group involved in the suicide-bombing campaign against Israelis. Rose has recently written for V.F. about Sudan and about Iraqi brigadier general Abu Zeinab al-Qurairy. He is currently working on his fifth book, The Big Eddy Club, about a death-row inmate in Georgia.

Sebastiao Salgado—whose work to eradicate polio in India is the subject of Christopher Hitchens’s column this month—knows that there are tougher health battles on the horizon. “Polio is a global problem that we can finish,” he says. “What’s next is hepatitis B, AIDS, and malaria, among others.” Born in Brazil, Salgado started taking pictures professionally after experimenting with his wife’s camera in the early 1970s. Since then he has devoted his life to documenting social transformations around the world. His most recent project, “Migrations,” was mounted last year at the International Center of Photography.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 58

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 56

Contributing editor Laura Jacobs discovered that New York accessories designer Kate Spade and her partner and husband, Andy, who oversees marketing and advertising and has his own shop in SoHo, make for one of the city’s great collaborations. “Andy brings a conceptual clarity to the company that complements Kate’s sculptural talents,” Jacobs says. “The merger of their sensibilities is an amazing fit.” Jacobs, who wrote about Emily Post in December 2001, was not surprised to find out that each new Kate Spade employee is given a copy of Emily Post’s Etiquette. “Graciousness is part of their aesthetic,” she explains. Jacobs’s first novel. Women About Town, is out in late May from Viking.

All photographer Eric Boman knew about Kate and Andy Spade, the wife-and-husband team behind the $70 million business of bags, shoes, and beauty products that bears Kate Spade’s name, was that “their products are knocked off on every street corner in Manhattan.” Boman was delighted to find that Kate and Andy were game for just about anything, including destroying their own merchandise. “In one of the pictures, their dog is tearing one of Kate’s bags on the floor,” he says. Rather than ruining an authentic bag, an assistant suggested buying a counterfeit bag. “And Kate said, ‘No, no, no! People will think they’re badly made.’ So she gave us a bag from the new line for the dog to chew up.”

When you see a V.F. writer on the Today show, it’s likely that deputy director of public relations Sharon Schieffer helped make it happen. A Washington, D.C., native, Schieffer grew up in a household where “not only The Washington Post but The Hotline and The Cook Political Report were required reading.” At age 16 she attended her first national political convention. “The circus atmosphere of politics is not that different from breaking big news stories, which the magazine does virtually every month,” says Schieffer. “The phones ring off the hook and your mind is going a million miles a minute. You don’t have a second to reflect on what’s happening until after the reporters’ deadlines. And then it starts all over again.”

On page 142, contributing editor Nancy Jo Sales chronicles the nighttime adventures of the 3 A.M. girls, London’s gossip-column team of the moment, whom Sales describes as “Manolo Blahnik-wearing Walter Winchells.” “They’re an interesting phenomenon because, even though they’re a national joke, they have a lot of power, and people are afraid of them,” Sales says. Having written for V.F. about the Hilton sisters, ID Models owner Paolo Zampolli, and Hugh Hefner, Sales knows a thing or two about infiltrating the lives of boldfaced names—and cuts the 3 A.M. girls a little more slack. “Being a gossip columnist is grueling work,” she says. “These girls are married to their column.”

FOR DETAILS, SEE CREDITS PAGE