Estée Lauder: Beyond the Magic

Israel wrote this unauthorised biography of Estee Lauder in 1985, published shortly before Lauder's own memoir appeared.

The business content covers the building of the company. Estee Lauder, born Josephine Esther Mentzer in Queens to immigrant parents, started by selling face creams her uncle formulated, demonstrating them personally in beauty salons and then in department stores. The commercial decisions that built the business include securing counter space in prestige department stores rather than selling through drugstores, which positioned the products as luxury; the personal demonstration and touch selling technique she taught her sales staff; the gift with purchase promotion, which the company originated and which became standard across the industry; the launch of Youth Dew as a bath oil rather than a perfume, which women bought for themselves rather than waiting to receive as a gift, and which transformed the company's revenue; and the creation of multiple brands including Clinique, positioned as allergy-tested and dermatologist-developed with a distinctly clinical presentation, which reached customers the main brand did not.

Israel also covers the family, the social ambition, and the reinvention of Lauder's own origins, which the biography documents against the account Lauder told.

Two cautions apply. The book is unauthorised, was written without cooperation and was disputed by the family. More importantly, Lee Israel was later convicted of forging and selling literary letters, and wrote a memoir about it; this does not establish anything about this book, which was published decades earlier and was not implicated, but readers should be aware of the author's subsequent record when weighing uncorroborated claims.