Provocative cultural journalist and New York Times bestselling
author Michael Gross is currently a contributing editor at
Travel & Leisure. He has previously held positions at the New York
Times, New York, Radar, George, and Esquire. His writing has
appeared in Vanity Fair, Interview, Details, Elle, Architectural
Digest, American Photo,
Town & Country, and Cosmopolitan, and he has also written for the
Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, the Village
Voice, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Chicago Tribune. He has
profiled subjects from John F. Kennedy Jr. to Greta Garbo, from
Richard Gere to Ivana Trump, and he has written on subjects such as
divorce, plastic surgery, Greenwich Village, and sex in the
nineties. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling Model:
The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women (1995), which was published in
eight countries; My Generation (2000), a biography of the Baby Boom
generation; Genuine Authentic: The Real Life of Ralph Lauren
(2003); and 740 Park (2005). He currently lives in New York City.
Praise for Rogues' Gallery
“Gross demonstrates he knows his stuff. It's a terrific tale, with
all the elements of a gossipy, color-rich, fact-packed Vanity
Fair-style takedown.” –Maria Puente, USA Today
“Provocative.” –Reid Pillifant, New York Observer
“Any and all facts that I knew of personally, the author gets
absolutely right, which makes me trust much else in the book–and
there's a great deal else, indeed an entire history of the museum
beginning from its gradual birth in the 1870s, told as a kind of
extended gossip dish, a dense and exhaustively factual one, about
the powerful egos that drove it into prominence and kept it there.
I am not particularly sympathetic to any view of the world as a
gossipy chronicle. I didn't expect to like the book's tone, but I
found a good 100 pages had gone by before I could even put it down.
. . . The book is important, and what's more, splendidly readable.”
–Melik Kaylan, Forbes.com
"Highly entertaining." –Manuela Hoelterhoff, Bloomberg
"Gross’ s coup is not only in the vast amounts of information he
has obtained but also in his ability to tell a story about the rich
and powerful people of New York nearly effortlessly and without
disdain." –Jillian Steinhauer, ArtInfo.com
". . . a pageturner that unravels like an elite whodunit, and is
reaping encomiums from advance readers. Destined to be the talk of
art circles in the U.S. and abroad. . . . Not only by art
connoisseurs but by culturati hungry for a captivating, tattle-tale
yarn, Rogues’ Gallery will spark a furor." –George Christy, The
Beverly Hills Courier
"Gross relishes every nefarious or audacious episode as he marches
through the museum’s fascinating history of curatorial excellence,
social climbing, and skulduggery. It’ s a tale of elitists versus
populists, of spectacular gifts and scandals, trustees refusing to
consider art made by living artists and formidable innovators,
especially Robert Moses and Thomas Hoving. Whether he is portraying
the museum’s first director, the scoundrel Luigi Palma di Cesnola,
John D. Rockefeller (the museum’s “greatest benefactor”), curator
Henry Geldzahler, Diana Vreeland of the Costume Institute, or, in
the most sordid chapter, vice chairman Annette de la Renta, Gross
zestfully mixes factual reportage with piquantly entertaining
anecdotes." –Donna Seaman, Booklist
"Gross is a good reporter, ever-digging, fanatical about details
and without cooperation from the Met, he has produced a fascinating
history of the museum, its place in the world, its place in the New
York social firmament and its ups, downs, ins, outs, plus the
trajectories of its various directors. . . . a fabulous, realistic,
well-researched book " –Liz Smith
"Rogues’ Gallery: The Secret History of the Moguls and the Money
that Made the Metropolitan Museum, has all of New York talking."
–Style.com
". . . a must-read." –Rush & Molloy, New York Daily News
". . . destined to be a must-read amongst the cognescenti, not to
mention the art world." –David Patrick Columbia, New York Social
Diary
“Michael Gross hangs the eccentric and dazzlingly rich characters
behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” –Vanity Fair
“Sharp and well-constructed, the readers will marvel at how the
institution transcended the bickering and backhanded power plays to
become one of the largest and most prestigious museums in the
world. A deft rendering of the down-and-dirty politics of the art
world.” –Kirkus Reviews
“For more than a century, the coupling of art with commerce has
made New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art the world’s most
glamorous whore, according to this sprawling history. . . .
Behind-the-scenes dirt and an intriguing look at the symbiosis of
culture and cash.” –Publishers Weekly
“Michael Gross has proven once again that he is a premier
chronicler of the rich. Rogues’ Gallery is an insightful,
entertaining look at a great institution—with all its flaws and all
its greatness.” —Gay Talese, author of A Writer’s Life
“The title alone tantalizes but once you pick up this book and
start reading about the good and the great and the hijinks of high
society, it becomes un-put-downable!!!” —Kitty Kelley, author of
The Family: The Real Story of The Bush Dynasty
Praise for 740 Park
“Tantalizing, intimate, engrossing, intriguing. A deeply researched
book that deserves a prominent place among the social histories of
20th-century Manhattan.” —Washington Post
“One building as [a] microcosm of life on a silver platter. The
voyeurism is so giddy that 740 Park sometimes feels like an
extended feat of free-association. . . . Outside the work of Edith
Wharton or Jane Austen, it’s rare to find such brazen speculation
about exactly what people are worth. Changing demographic and
economic realities have made 740 Park a mirror of its times.”
—Janet Maslin, New York Times
“[A] great read . . . gossipy . . . revealing.” —People
“This is social history at its finest.” —Dominick Dunne
“740 Park is the home of some of the world’s wealthiest people.
Gross takes readers inside its doorman-protected walls, exposing
the shocking and sometimes tragic secrets the building has been
guarding for nearly a century.” —Star
“It took a reporter and storyteller like Michael Gross to lay out
the epic tale—truly, the story of American capitalism and
20th-century New York society—that is 740 Park Ave. . . . This is
the kind of heady terrain Gross knows well.” —Hartford Courant
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