#AwesomeAuthors #MoverandShaker #MichaelGross #Exclusive #Interview with #PeachyDeegan @ManhattanPeachy #WhomYouKnow On #FlightoftheWasp

Mover and Shaker and Awesome Author Michael Gross

Headshot: Thorsten Roth, www.studios594.com

Michael Gross’ Rogues’ Gallery was a highly controversial book, exposing the machinations of the wealthy supporters of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in an unprecedented manner. Preferring anonymity and thinking it might be best if he got out of town for a while, Gross next turned his attention to the residential choices of the wealthy of Los Angeles, and in 2011, published Unreal Estate: Money, Ambition and the Lust for Land in Los Angeles, Highly Recommended by Whom You Know, focusing on a handful of great estates in the three wealthiest neighborhood of West Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Bel Air and Holmby Hills.

In the years that followed, Mover and Shaker Michael Gross moved from Travel & Leisure magazine to Departures, where he continued to write cover stories on travel and the culture of the world’s wealthy. He also became a columnist for Crain’s New York Business and launched another column on historic luxury real estate for Avenue magazine, a society journal. He also wrote House of Outrageous Fortune, which earned Whom You Know’s Highest Recommendation, his third book on luxury real estate, this time telling the story of the most successful condominium in New York history, Fifteen Central Park West, and chronicling an epic shift in the demographics of wealth in the city, the emergence of an entirely new class consisting of hedge fund runner, international oligarchs, tech tycoons and mega-celebrities, who set records with their home-buying. It was released in 2014 and became his third New York Times bestseller.

Gross’ penultimate book, Focus: The Secret, Sexy, Sometimes Sordid World of Fashion photographers, a sequel to Model, Highly Recommended by Whom You Know, in which he turned his camera around to look at the people behind the camera, telling the stories of such eminent photographers as Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Bruce Weber, Helmut Newton, Gilles Bensimon and Terry Richardson, which prefigured the #metoo movement in fashion.

Following the release of Focus, Gross was asked to edit Avenue, and spent two years helming the magazine. After arranging its sale to a new owner in 2019, Gross resigned to undertake his latest book, Flight of the WASP: The Rise, Fall and Future of America’s Original Ruling Class, for Atlantic Monthly Press, which has been Highly Recommended by Whom You Know. Four years of reporting and writing later, it was serialized in Town & Country and released in November 2023.

Michael Gross continues to write about travel and the upper class for magazines; he was named Editor-at-Large of Palmer: The Palm Beach Reader, in 2022. His work is also published online, most recently in Air Mail. He lives on the East River in a mid-Century modern cooperative building in Kips Bay with his wife Barbara Hodes, owner of New York City Private Shopping Tour, and their West Highland Terrier Agrippina, aka Aggie.  Peachy Deegan interviewed Michael Gross for Whom You Know and we are thrilled to present him to you as our latest Awesome Author!

Peachy Deegan: What does it take to write a Bestseller?

Michael Gross: As Red Smith, the sportswriter once said, it’s easy. “You just sit at the keyboard and stare at a blank screen until little tiny beads of blood pop out of your forehead. But seriously: Lightning has to strike. A perfect storm of public atmosphere and reader interest. Or you can already be a celebrity—and your fans will buy your book regardless of what’s inside the cover..

We understand you started FLIGHT OF THE WASP prior to covid. How did the worldwide disaster affect your book and what did you do to rise to the challenge?

Mid-way through my research, the world shut down, which meant that the archives and libraries I needed to write a book covering 400 years were unavailable. Fortunately, the New York Public Library expanded at-home access to its online databases, and allowed books to be borrowed and returned by the mail, so I was able to access some primary materials and secondary sources that were based on the archival material that was suddenly out of reach. More important, perhaps, but also perhaps related, the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement greatly affected the tone of the book. It became all the more important that it be a warts-and-all portrayal of America’s founding families, highlighting both their best ideals and their worst practices.

How did you decide which people to profile in FLIGHT OF THE WASP?

I simultaneously research individuals and families. An individual in each family is highlighted as an avatar of an era in American history, but in almost every case, they have living relatives today. In one case, I knew I wanted to write about both a living person and his historic ancestor: William Bradford of the Mayflower and his descendant Whitney Tower Jr., of Nouvelle and Warhol Society. In another, I knew I wanted to write about Michael Butler, but first had to ensure that he had interesting ancestors. Because WASP society was a small world, some characters emerged out of research into others. For instance, Lewis Cass Ledyard, J. Pierpont Morgan’s lawyer, led me to Lewis Cass, the politician who laid the philosophical foundation of Andrew Jackson’s policy of Indian Removal.

Why didn’t you choose to profile more females in Flight of the Wasp?

Unfortunately, America was a patriarchal society for much of its history, so the lead characters are indeed all men, but most of the families I write about also contain strong female characters, and in every case, I sought them out and also feature them. The Peabody sisters are an early example, but there are also prominent Randolph, Whitney, Rutherfurd, Morris and Butler women covered, to name but a few.

In researching Flight of the Wasp, what did you uncover that surprised you the most?

I was shocked and amused by how many of the Colonial families intermarried and carried on affairs with each other. I recall interviewing Whitney Tower Jr., telling him some of the other characters, and my jaw dropping when laughed and said, “My father slept with her!”

We believe you are a pioneer in the WASP subject matter as a scholarly function; do you believe you have any competition in this area and if so, please elaborate.

There were lots of books on the subject of WASP America in the past. The most notable were Cleveland Amory’s Who Killed Society and E. Digby Baltzell’s The Protestant Establishment, but I have two big shelves of WASP books in my office, and many more volumes in storage. More recently, one standout title is WASPs by Michael Knox Beran, but it’s a very different sort of book in my opinion, more elegy than narrative history.

What do you like best about writing a book and what do you like best about writing magazine pieces?

They are different disciplines. Magazine articles are miracles of compression. Books give you more room to breathe, to digress, to elaborate. Magazines and newspapers aren’t designed to last. Books are. Also, as the world of print journalism has contracted, the world of books has held on, though tenuously. So my message to all is: Buy Books!

What do you find most challenging about writing a book and what do you find most challenging about writing magazine pieces?

A book needs a subject worthy of lengthy consideration. A magazine piece can be more of a trifle. That said, I once joked that a gossip item in April can become a cover story in August when the news is slow. And a subject fit only for the gutter press can dominate bestseller lists if enough people fall for monstrous bullshit and elect such a person to public office,

What do you know now about writing a book that you wish you knew before you ever wrote one?

How to step back and think hard, and then step back and think again, before putting words on the page.

If you could own any three residences in Manhattan, what would be the addresses and why?

When I was a kid, fresh in the city, I wanted to own either 30 West 10th Street or 40 West 10th Street, two very different but very beautiful townhouses. Now I’m quite happy where I am, but if I had enough money for, say, a duplex at 740 Park Avenue, I’d stay where I am in New York, and buy a small house on St. Barths and another in Topanga Canyon, and perhaps an apartment in Rome or Paris and use the change to fly between them.

What should everyone know about real estate that they don’t?

A 7% mortgage is a bargain. My first mortgage was above 12% and I have never once regretted it.

What are Aggie’s opinions on your books?

If she could eat them, she might like them, but she can’t.

What should we all know about Barbara’s private shopping tour?

My wife works with American and international clients, designing bespoke fashion shopping expeditions all over New York based on their individual taste and desires. You can learn more at https://nycprivateshoppingtour.com/.

In your last interview you praised F. Scott Fitzgerald, who is our favorite author. What do you like best about Fitzgerald?

He inspired my pal Jay McInernery, who is one of my favorite contemporary writers.

If you were throwing a cocktail party in Manhattan for F. Scott Fitzgerald today because he came back to life, how would you give it and how would it go?

It would have to be at The Waverly Inn, which means my editor at Air Mail Graydon Carter would have to co-host, and as he’s the world’s greatest living party-giver, I’d have to defer to him on the details.

You said Karl Lagerfeld was always good for a provocative quote. Which ones that he gave you are your favorite and why?

There was a season in the ‘90s when fashion had no narrative, no through line, no consistency at all. I went to him hoping he’d help me find a story. He said “It’s the fashion of no fashion.” Ta-da!

What should everyone know about your father?

Milton Gross was a child of the Great Depression, raised in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, Brooklyn, who became one of New York’s most prominent sports columnists, working for the New York Post, and also wrote a number of books, and co-wrote the autobiography of world heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson.

Which is the best book you wrote that should be turned into a movie?

Model is my most optioned book and is now in development for a limited series on FX, but the last section of Rogues’ Gallery about Jane Engelhardt and her daughter, known today as Annette de la Renta, is the movie I’ve most wanted to wanted to see made from my work. It’s Casablanca as told by Edith Wharton.

What one word best describes you and why?

Tenacious. As Tom Petty sang, I won’t back down.

What do you take your sense of identity from?

My work, my wife and Aggie, my dog.

What is your favorite place to be in Manhattan?

The Congestion Pricing Zone (i.e. anywhere below 60th Street) once we stop the deluded, discriminatory effort to tax people who choose to live here for the right to come and go freely.

What is your favorite shop in Manhattan?

Any bookstore. There are so few left, we have to treasure them all from Barnes & Noble to McNally Jackson and Shakespeare to tiny neighborhood shops like The Corner Bookstore and Three Lives.

If you could hire anybody who would it be and why?

I’d hire myself so I would no longer have to wonder where my next paycheck was coming from.

What is the best advice you’ve received in your career and what mentors have influenced you the most?

Joyce Carol Oates, whose writing course I once took, said “There is no such thing as writer’s block. The awful feelings writers bring to the typewriter simply mean they’re no read to write.” My sister, the late Jane Gross, once said of writing, “When in doubt, lay brick.” My mentors have all been editors who gave me a chance: Noe Goldwasser and Greg Mitchell at Crawdaddy, Jon Larsen at New Times, Jane Amsterdam at Manhattan Inc., Abe Rosenthal, Nancy Newhouse and Harold Gal at the New York Times, and Ed Kosner at New York magazine stand out.

What is your favorite drink?

Le Pétale de Rose from Chateau Barbeyrolles

What is the funniest thing that has ever happened to you at a cocktail party?

After Gerald Marie, the head of Elite Models in Paris and then Linda Evangelista’s husband, threatened my life at a Vogue party on the Faubourg St. Honoré in Paris, Anna Wintour said to me, “I hear you had a moment.”

What is your favorite restaurant in Manhattan?

Il Posto Accanto

What is your favorite Manhattan book or favorite character in Manhattan literature?

Holly Golightly

What is your favorite tv show and why?

The night in 1965 when the Rolling Stones played The Clay Cole Show. They changed the world.

What is your favorite movie and why?

I don’t have a favorite movie but the ones I keep coming back to are the Sean Connery Bond films and the one I’ve seen the most is The Graduate. I was an usher when it played at the Fantasy Theater in Rockville Centre.

What’s one thing you wish the world better understood about you and why?

That there’s a value in mixing high and low, tabloid and broadsheet, trash and high culture. The twain should meet.

Who would you like to be for a day and why?

A kid in the crowd ay a Bob Dylan concert in 1965. I didn’t get to see live him until the Concert for Bangla Desh in 1971.

What would you like to be asked in an interview that you never have been asked, and how would you answer it?

What would you like to be asked in an interview that you have never been asked?

If you could have dinner with any person living or passed, who would it be and why?

John Fitzgerald and Jaqueline Kennedy to see if they were as charismatic in person as they seemed to a ten year old. I later met Jackie, and she was, but I’d still like to have that dinner.

What do you personally do or what have you done to give back to the world?

I write books that I hope illuminate a few small corners of the world.

What do you think is most underrated and overrated in Manhattan?

Underrated: Midtown East. Overrated: Times Square

Other than Movers and Shakers of course, what is your favorite WhomYouKnow.com​ column and what do you like about it?

Awesome Authors is my favorite for obvious reasons!

What else should Whom You Know readers know about you?

They can find out more about me than they’ll ever want to know at www.mgross.com, which has just had its first re-design in about a decade.

How would you like to be contacted by Whom You Know readers?

It’s easy to reach me via the web site.