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Meryl Gordon

Biography

Meryl Gordon

Meryl Gordon is the New York Times bestselling author of MRS. ASTOR REGRETS: The Hidden Betrayals of A Family Beyond Reproach, BUNNY MELLON: The Life of an American Style Legend, THE PHANTOM OF FIFTH AVENUE: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark, and THE WOMAN WHO KNEW EVERYONE: The Power of Perle Mesta, Washington’s Most Famous Hostess. An award-winning journalist, she is a tenured journalism professor at New York University. Her work has appeared in Vanity Fair, New York Magazine and The New York Times.

Meryl Gordon

Books by Meryl Gordon

The Woman Who Knew Everyone: The Power of Perle Mesta, Washington’s Most Famous Hostess
by Meryl Gordon - Biography, History, Nonfiction

Perle Mesta was a force to be reckoned with. In her heyday, this wealthy globe-trotting Washington widow was one of the most famous women in America, garnering as much media attention as Eleanor Roosevelt. Renowned for her world-class parties featuring politicians and celebrities, she was very close to three presidents: Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson. A pioneering supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment, she was a prodigious Democratic fundraiser and rescued Harry Truman’s financially flailing 1948 campaign. In THE WOMAN WHO KNEW EVERYONE, Meryl Gordon chronicles Perle’s lavish life and society adventures in Newport, Manhattan and Washington, while highlighting her important but nearly forgotten contribution to American politics and the feminist movement.

The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark
by Meryl Gordon - Biography, History, Nonfiction

Born in 1906, Huguette Clark grew up in her family's 121-room Beaux Arts mansion in New York and was one of the leading celebrities of her day. All her money and all her real estate could not protect her in her later life from being manipulated by shady hangers-on and hospitals that were only too happy to admit (and bill) a healthy woman. But what happened to Huguette that turned a vivacious, young socialite into a recluse? And what was her life like inside that gilded, copper cage?