About this item
Fifteen families.Four hundred years. The complex saga of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite inAmerica's history. . For decades, writers from Cleveland Amory to JosephAlsop to the editors of Politico have proclaimed thediminishment of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, who for generations were thedominant socio-cultural-political force in America. While the WASP elite has,in the last half century, indeed drifted from American centrality to theperiphery, its relevance and impact remain, as Michael Gross reveals in hiscompelling chronicle.. From Colonial America's founding settlements throughthe Gilded Age to the present day, Gross traces the complex legacy of American WASPs - theirprofound accomplishments and egregious failures - through the lives of fifteeninfluential individuals and their very privileged, sometimes intermarriedfamilies.
About the Author
This book list is a work in progress. Michael Gross is recognized as one of America's most provocative writers of non-fiction-its "foremost chronicler of the upper-crust," says curbed. com. His latest book Unreal Estate, to be published November 1, 2011, is a west coast version of his bestseller, 740 Park, this time exposing the most exclusive neighborhoods of Los Angeles-Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills, Bel Air and Beverly Park-and their residents. 740 Park, published in 2005, is the inside story of New York's richest, most prestigious cooperative apartment building. Built by James T. Lee, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' grandfather, and long the residence of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. , 740 Park is today the home of some of New York's wealthiest and most prominent families. Fortune has described 740 Park as "jaw-dropping apartment porn. " It offers an unprecedented peek into the world of such latterday financial heroes and villains as Stephen Schwarzman, Ezra Merkin and John Thain. In between these real estate epics, Gross published the wildly controversial expose of New York's cultural elite Rogues' Gallery: The Secret History of the Moguls and the Money that Made the Metropolitan Museum in 2009, setting off an extraordinary campaign by some of New York's most influential citizens to suppress the book. It failed. The New York Times Book Review called it "a blockbuster exhibition of human achievement and flaws" and Vanity Fair said it is simply "explosive. " Why? "Gross demonstrates he knows his stuff. It's a terrific tale ... gossipy, color-rich, fact-packed ... What Gross reveals is stuff that more people should know," according to USA Today. A paperback edition was released in May 2010. Before 740 Park, Gross wrote Genuine Authentic, a biography of fashion designer Ralph Lauren. It was acclaimed by The New York Times as a work of "impressive reporting" that "hack(s) through the hype and half-truths" of the Polo purveyor's legend. Publishers Weekly praised his "meticulous research and artful prose ... The crackerjack journalist simultaneously tells a compelling story and gives it meat enough to be satisfying."A Contributing Editor of Travel & Leisure, Gross has also worked as a columnist for The New York Times, GQ, Tatler, Town & Country, and The Daily News; a Contributing Editor of New York (where he wrote 26 cover stories, including the magazine's all-time best-selling reported cover story on John F. Kennedy, Jr.) , and of Talk; a Senior Writer at Esquire, and a Senior Editor at George.In 2000, Gross published My Generation, a generational biography of the Baby Boom. It was called "wonderful" by the Washington Times, "trenchant, well-dramatized, thought-provoking and unusual" by Kirkus Reviews and "hugely entertaining ... a brilliantly reported story," by the Orlando Sentinel.Gross's 199
