Enter Helen by Brooke Hauser

biographer Maurice Zolotow; the president of Bantam Books, Oscar Dystel; and their respective wives.) Unfortunately, David had had to cancel his trip east at the last minute—trouble was brewing at Fox over a multimillion-dollar adaptation of Cleopatra —but Letty had promised to meet Helen after another dinner for a late-night drink.
    When the telegram arrived, it was before noon on Wednesday, and the city was at work. In offices throughout Midtown, everyone was still talking about the sultry birthday salute that Marilyn Monroe, sewn into a sheer, sparkly, flesh-colored gown, had given to President Kennedy four days earlier at Madison Square Garden. Outside Helen’s window, vendors sold their last copies of the New York Times to businessmen in crew cuts and cordovan shoes wanting to read up on the Yankees’ victory over the Angels, and what was happening in Vietnam. And in the boutiques along Fifth Avenue, salesmen fitted customers in seersucker suits as crisp as new banknotes, beckoning summer. Soon enough, people would be lining up in front of the Trans-Lux on Lexington Avenue and Fifty-Second Street to see The Miracle Worker , starring Patty Duke as Helen Keller and Anne Bancroft as her teacher, but the theaters were not yet open. And across the city, booksellers were still putting Sex and the Single Girl on the shelves, in time for the lunch crowd.
    The book itself was far from showy. In fact, it looked more like a secret handbook. There was no picture on the front. Just a simple teal-blue cover, with the word SEX in light blue and the i in Single swapped out for the number 1 in the same shade. The Unmarried Woman’s Guide to Men, Career, the Apartment, Diet, Fashion, Money and Men , it read at the bottom under the author’s name in all caps.
    Long before it hit shelves, the distributors at Random House had insisted that the title be Sex and the Single Girl instead of Sex for the Single Girl , as was initially proposed—a subtle change that somehow seemed less crass. The jacket designers had been going for an equally understated, tasteful look that would titillate readers without going over the top and scaring them away. A single girl who was itching to get her hands on a copy of the book didn’t have to feel conspicuous leafing through the pages. She only had to grab it before another girl did. When it was rightly in her hands, she turned to the back cover to get a good look at the black-and-white photo of the author, Helen Gurley Brown. Wearing a tailored jacket, pearls, and her hair in a prim flip, she looked like countless other agency girls who were just now typing on their IBM Selectrics at countless firms lining Madison Avenue. Or maybe she looked more like their boss. She had an authoritative air with her crossed arms, arched brows, level gaze, and small, bemused smile. “I dare you to read this book,” she seemed to be saying to that girl.
    Tens of thousands of girls accepted the dare.
    By the time lunch rolled around, people were talking about Sex and the Single Girl . A week later, it was condensed in The American Weekly , reaching a nationwide audience and giving the book a flying start. It also landed on the bestseller lists of the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times , where on the latter it rose to No. 3, beating Six Crises by Richard M. Nixon. “How does it feel to be on top of Richard Nixon?” Letty quipped.
    In millions of living rooms across America, Helen Gurley Brown was on TV talking about Sex and the Single Girl , thoughfrequently the networks wouldn’t allow her to actually utter the title. Instead, she displayed the book for the camera.
    In hundreds of interviews with the press, she held her own, answering questions as Letty had instructed her to do—her way.
    Where did she draw the line? Was she really suggesting that a single girl should pursue self-fulfillment at any cost, even if it meant having an affair with a married