In January of 2018, just a few weeks after Radhika Jones began her unlikely appointment as editor of Vanity Fair and was still feeling her way into Graydon Carter’s once-august throne, I flew to New York for an introductory engagement and diplomatic overture. (At the time, I covered the media for CNN.) After ascending the heights of One World Trade—Condé Nast’s downsized home after grander piles at 4 Times Square and 350 Madison—I was let out on the 41st floor and escorted to a vast corner office with floor-to-ceiling windows and a grand bespoke curvilinear tan wooden desk. The office had been designed for Graydon by his architect, Basil Walter, and it alone probably would have been more than enough to lure Radhika from her sleepy former job in the New York Times books department.