Michael Gross

Attention Sarah Palin fans (and hataz)!!!!

Michael Gross — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 21:27:11 +0000

I am not the magazine writer Michael Joseph Gross so please don’t send me love or hate letters for him. Speaking of which, attention Fox News fans: Neither am I the lawyer Michael Gross who sometimes appears on Fox News, so please don’t send me mail meant for him, either. Oh, and guys? You’ve got mail (but I’ve deleted it).

Reading List

Michael Gross — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:49:24 +0000

D Magazine in Dallas reports that Roger Horchow of the Horchow catalogs has very good taste in books.

Splitsville, Styles-style

Michael Gross — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 16:52:31 +0000

Styles of the Times has just posted a piece on the Peter Brant-Stephanie Seymour divorce that is, alas typically, a day late and a dollar short. Anyone seeking more telling background on this fiercely ambitious and oddly-well-matched pair may want to dip into Model, where the compelling Mr. Brant’s criminal record (which goes unmentioned in the Times), and the stunning Ms. Seymour’s riveting sexual past with the likes of John Casablancas (it gets a sentence), Axl Rose (two sentences!) and Warren Beatty (also unmentioned) are given a full airing. A small taste, describing a 1992 fight between Rose and Seymour: “Seymour swung at him with a chair and punched him in the crotch. Stephanie, said the singer’s sister, ‘wants to push thing to the edge.’” She met her match in Peter Brant.

Rogues’ Gallery a #1 Bestseller

Michael Gross — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:13:42 +0000

Just back from a long trip to faraway places and with internet access restored noticed that not only is Rogues’ Gallery the #4 bestselling paperback non-fiction book at Bookhampton this week, it is the #1 bestseller that is not about the Hamptons. So thanks again, discerning East End readers. “Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost.” –Alfred Whitney Griswold, New York Times, 24 February 1959

We are #4!

Michael Gross — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 08:34:56 +0000

Rogues’ Gallery is #4 on the Bookhampton non-fiction bestseller list this week. Thanks Bookhampton and all you East End readers!

It’s good to be the director

Michael Gross — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 13:53:13 +0000

Gripebox first revealed Metropolitan Museum director Thomas Campbell’s $4 million Fifth Avenue apartment–and some of the peculiarities of his living arrangements–here back in March. That’s not it above, but the floorplan shows the same apartment one floor above Campbell’s. Today’s New York Times reveals that though Campbell receives free housing across the street from his museum office, he pays no income tax on a perk that’s got to be worth a tidy six-figure sum annually. As so often happens when it deals with the Met, the local community newspaper went easy on Campbell, covering his situation in two very brief paragraphs, while serving up seven paragraphs on the similar housing perk given to Ellen Futter, director of the American Museum of Natural History (which has not had the sense to put mutiple Sulzbergers on its board of trustees). Too bad. The history of the Met’s housing benefit and who has benefitted from it is, to say the least, titillating. Thomas Hoving, for instance, refused it, preferring not to live (metaphorically speaking) above the store. There’s lots more of what the Times didn’t tell you in Rogues’ Gallery. Click the link to the left to buy a copy.

A Diller of a Promise

Michael Gross — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 16:54:09 +0000

Forty American billionaires have made moral (i.e. not binding, but public) pledges, at the urging of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, to give half their fortunes to charity, instead of using them soley to spoil future generations. Among those taking the pledge plunge: Paul Allen, Mike Bloomberg, Eli and Edythe Broad, Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, Larry Ellison, Barron Hilton, Ken Langone, George Lucas, Ronald O. Perelman, Pete Peterson, T. Boone Pickens, David Rockefeller, Ted Turner, Sandy Weill and Shelby White. Visit givingpledge.org to see the entire list–and if you’ve got the money, join in.

Attention Ron Burkle: B&N on the Block??

Michael Gross — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 21:30:10 +0000

Barnes & Noble has announced that it is considering a sale of the company in order to increase stockholder value and raise its share price.

R.I.P. Judy Peabody

Michael Gross — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:54:37 +0000

Judy Peabody died yesterday after a long and difficult illness. David Patrick Columbia has written a touching remembrance of this compassionate and open-minded heroine, one of the great ladies of New York City in this or any era.

Beach Reading: Rogues’ Gallery Rising

Michael Gross — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:42:52 +0000

Rogues’ Gallery has rocketed to #2 on the Book Soup paperback non-fiction bestseller list this week. Love the Soup (and I don’t mean Tom Campbell’s) and thanks all you readers in Los Angeles!