Showing Whiteout: Lost in Aspen by Ted Conover

WHITEOUT is Ted Conover's classic report on life among the wealthy and the narcissistic–as well as some real people–in Aspen, Colorado. Former Hugh Hefner paramour and Playboy executive Barbi Benton holds her annual pajama party. Celebrity photographer Annie Liebovitz actually finds someone who doesn't want his picture taken: Hunter Thompson. New Agers claim UFO sightings and seek eternal life. Hardrock miners struggle to hold on to an older way of life in the face of all of this. And above it all is the majestic beauty of the Rockies. Unable to deny the seduction of the Aspen mystique himself, Conover is nonetheless able to keep his distance and emerge with an entertaining and insightful travelogue like few others.

“Conover’s ability to give himself entirely to the world he portrays is present again in WHITEOUT: Lost in Aspen–a lucid, witty account that bristles with ironies but stays clear of malice as it traces Aspen’s progress from mining town to hippie hangout to rarefied Hollywood outpost ... It’s not often that you read a travel book in which you worry that the author’s soul is in danger. The result is Conover’s funniest book yet, and one that has much to say about our country in the 1990s.” — San Francisco Chronicle Book Review