The Lady Is a Tramp

Edie: An American Biography , by Jean Stein, edited by George Plimpton (1982). Nearly thirty-five years after Edie Sedgwick's death from an overdose, at the age of twenty-eight, her glamorous vapor continues to intoxicate alienated, artsy, wannabe-anorexic teens (who, rightly or wrongly, credit her hipness to her lack of hips); fashion designers (John Galliano's spring 2005 runway show for Christian Dior Haute Couture opened with twenty Edies in black tights and skimpy Gernreich-y sheaths); and film executives (Sienna Miller was set to star in the next attempt at a biopic).

But who was this waspy twig? In Jean Stein's impressive oral history focusing on the Factory years, Edie emerges as a speed freak who wore fur coats over bare skin, arrived late to parties and left early, and tore through a sizable inheritance in a matter of months, and whose only real work involved making over her legs in the ...