In 1965, a young, up-and-coming illustrator by the name of Edward Sorel tore away layer after layer of linoleum from the floor of his $97-a-month Manhattan apartment until he discovered a hidden treasure: issues of The New York Daily News and the Mirror from 1936, each ablaze with a scandalous child custody trial taking place in Hollywood starring the actress Mary Astor-and the journal in which she detailed her numerous affairs. Thus began a half-century obsession that reached its peak in Mary Astor's Purple Diary, "a thoroughly charming" (The New York Times Book Review/) account of the scandal in which Sorel narrates and illustrates the travails of the Oscar-winning actress alongside his own personal story of discovering an unlikely muse.

Now in a stunning paperback, featuring more than sixty ribald and rapturous original illustrations, Mary Astor's Purple Diary is the life's masterpiece of one of America's greatest illustrators.

Edward Sorel is an illustrator, caricaturist, and cartoonist whose satires and pictorial essays have appeared in Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, the Nation, and The New Yorker, for which he has done forty-six covers. He lives in New York City.