Vanity Fair...Africa Style

Hey...I'll be honest....I've never read Vanity Fair in my life...and most of you would think that's probably a good thing...but I just ordered a copy from Amazon with Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet on the cover...their July issue is all about Africa...and does some incredible stuff looking at its culture, issues, and people...Bono was the guest editor for this issue, and it is definitely worth picking up and reading cover to cover...there are actually 20 different covers with famous people who are passionate about the issues like AIDS and poverty gripping this continent...here's a blurb from the Vanity Fair website about it...and yes, this will probably be the last time I recommend you go buy Vanity Fair at the newsstand...

http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/toc/2007/toc200707

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/africa


'It's Bono, on Line One'
The 21 people who put their famous faces to work for this issue say it all. Annie Leibovitz paired them up on 20 different covers—shout-outs for the challenge, the promise, and the future of Africa.

For this special issue, Graydon Carter, Bono, and Annie Leibovitz collaborated on the unprecedented set of 20 covers to show a prominent group of people having a "conversation" about Africa. "It's a visual chain letter," says Leibovitz, "spreading the message from person to person to person." Among them: a supermodel who fled Somalia with her family 37 years ago, a senator whose grandfather and father are buried in Africa, an actor who makes an annual return to a tiny village in Benin to see his family, a music superstar who adopted a child from Malawi, a former boxing champion who visited Ghana when no American sports figure had gone there before. And more—including a poet, an archbishop, a queen, a president, a rapper, a comedian, a talk-show host, and billionaire philanthropists. Leibovitz put together the 21 subjects in what was, she says, "a little like having a dinner party and trying to seat people next to certain people." She adds, "These are incredible people of our time, involved in this effort to make Africa better, to get Africa self-sufficient, and to try to get rid of aids on the continent." Let the conversation continue. —LISA ROBINSON