"A blockbuster exhibition of human achievement and flaws." --New York Times Book Review
"Explosive." --Vanity Fair
"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.”–-USA Today
"Tantalizing…irresistable…one of the year’s most entertaining books.” --The Daily Beast
"Yummy." --New York Daily News
"Riveting and accurate. My God! The back-stabbing and Machiavellian conspiracies! I had no idea. I learned a lot." -Tom Hoving
"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
"The author clearly relishes dishing the dirt, but he also offers a supremely detailed history of the museum...Gross’s portrait of Met politics is sharp and well-constructed. A deft rendering of the down-and-dirty politics of the art world." --Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2009
“Sprawling history…..Behind-the-scenes dirt and an intriguing look at the symbiosis of culture and cash.” –Publishers Weekly, March 30, 2009
Rogues' Gallery
Now in a new, updated paperback edition, Rogues’ Gallery is the first independent, unauthorized look at the epic saga of the nation’s greatest museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and an endlessly entertaining follow-up to Michael Gross’ bestselling social history 740 Park. Gross pulls back the shades of secrecy that have long shrouded the upper class’s cultural and philanthropic ambitions and maneuvers–and paints a revealing portrait of a previously hidden face of American wealth and power, a rich, satisfying, alternately hilarious and horrifying look at America’s upper class, and what is perhaps its greatest creation. Includes a new afterword by the author, updating the story and telling the startling story of the book itself.
$16.99 * ISBN: 978-07679-2489-4 * Media Contact: Rachel Rokicki at Random House 212-782-8455 or rrokicki (at) randomhouse (dot) com * If you’d like Michael Gross to speak to your group contact: Authors Unlimited (212) 481-8484
The Latest News From Rogues' Gallery
Reading List
D Magazine in Dallas reports that Roger Horchow of the Horchow catalogs has very good taste in books.
Rogues’ Gallery a #1 Bestseller
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!
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
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.
Beach Reading: Rogues’ Gallery Rising
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!
