Romance novels, for those who've never ventured beyond their metallic-relief covers, depict a life unknowable to most women. It is a life in which bemuscled, race-car-driving aristocrats pursue glamorous heroines and in which couples with little need for frequent-flyer mileage cavort from grand Euro- capital to grand Euro-capital, proving that love blossoms best in those cities where a branch of Cartier may be found.
It is certainly a life knowable to Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman, the transcontinental socialite and current United States ambassador to France, whose jet-setting exploits are engagingly chronicled by TIME contributor Christopher Ogden in Life of the...