Bluebloods behaving badly: Meryl Gordon's Mrs. Astor Regrets (Houghton Mifflin) reveals how high society’s most beloved philanthropist allegedly fell prey to lowdown, fortune-drunk family members who robbed her of millions and, more tragically, peace and happiness in her final years.

Vanity Fair contributing photographer Norman Jean Roy documents the horrors of Cambodia’s notorious sex-slave Traffik (Powerhouse), from the underage victims to the women who have escaped the horror. Literary, political, and romantic intrigue burns up the epistles of Graham Greene: A Life in Letters (Norton), edited by Richard Greene (no relation). Hooman Majd claims The Ayatollah Begs to Differ (Doubleday). With staggering honesty, raw and unsparing humor, novelist Rachel Resnick outs herself as a Love Junkie (Bloomsbury). Michael Lewis shares scorched-marketplace tales of financial Panic (Norton), from the crash of ’87 to the current tanking of the subprime-mortgage industry.

The young life of the mind of Susan Sontag is Reborn (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) in the collected journals of her early years, edited by son David Rieff. Victor Fleming—the director who spirited us to Oz and Tara—is anointed An American Movie Master (Pantheon) by Michael Sragow. Craig Hill translates The Complete Fables of La Fontaine (Arcade) avec illustrations par Edward Sorel. Neil Harris unearths The Chicagoan (University of Chicago), the long-forgotten Jazz Age mag devoted to the Second City. Paul Duncan and Bengt Wanselius plunder The Ingmar Bergman Archives (Taschen). Robert Gottlieb gets to the pointe in Reading Dance (Pantheon). Wills-and-trusts attorney turned novelist Louis Auchindoss pierces the inner sanctum of an upper-crust law firm in Last of the Old Guard (Houghton Mifflin).

Reza War and Peace (National Geographic) is a photographic tour de force covering the conflicts rocking the Middle East and Asia by Reza Deghari, with V.F contributing editor Sebastian Junger lending his perspective. Sashertka (Simon & Schuster) is acclaimed historian Simon Montefiore's return to fiction. Designer Temple St. Clair'sAlchemy (HarperCollins) showcases traditionally crafted treasures fit for modern-day de’ Medicis, mermaid queens, and all women of mystery. Don Rickies and David Ritz show off Rickies’ Letters (Simon & Schuster). V.F. Godfather Graydon Carter produces and directs Vanity Fair’s Tales of Hollywood (Penguin), the deliciously salacious (and totally true!) inside dope on the making of 13 classic films, ranging from the sublime to the spectacularly stinko, including All About Eve, Saturday Night Fever, and Cleopatra. Now that woman knew how to live . . .

IN BRIEF

The American Society of Magazine Editors chooses The Best American Magazine Writing, 2008 (Columbia); David F. Travers rebuilds Arts & Architecture, 1945-54 (Taschen); Donna Goodman foresees A History of the Future (Monacelli); Ted Turner insists, Call Me Ted (Grand Central); Julia Lee's novella provokes Disquiet (Faber and Faber); Hugh Warwick pinpoints The Hedgehog s Dilemma (Bloomsbury); Jacqueline Demornex adores Lucien Lelong (Thames & Hudson).