Glamour is one of the most tantalizing and bewitching aspects of contemporary culture. But what exactly is it? Where does it come from? How old is it? And can anyone quite capture its magic? Stephen Gundle answers all these questions and more in this first ever history of the phenomenon, from Paris in the tumultuous final decades of the eighteenth century through to Hollywood, New York, and Monte Carlo in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from the glamorous fictional characters of Walter Scott to Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, and Paris Hilton.