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The Woman Who Knew Everyone: The Power of Perle Mesta, Washington's Most Famous Hostess
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About This Book
A deeply researched biography of the socialite, political hostess, activist and United States envoy to Luxembourg, Perle Mesta, from New York Times bestselling author Meryl Gordon. 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. Truman named her as the first female envoy to Luxembourg, which inspired the hit musical based on Perle's life – "Call Me Madam" – which starred Ethel Merman, ran on Broadway for two years and later became a movie. A pioneering supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment, she was a prodigious Democratic fundraiser and rescued Harry Truman's financially flailing 1948 campaign. In this intensely researched biography, author 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.
Reviews
"Does Mesta justice and a little more, sometimes allowing a researcher's enthusiasm to overestimate others' interest in the ghost she's pursuing ..."
"It's a reverent ode to an overlooked fixture of midcentury American politics."
"[Mesta] enhanced America's reputation and built goodwill in a country that had been traumatized by war ..."
"The biography doesn't elide Mesta's missteps, from her enthusiasm for former Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun to her occasional style faux pas."
"A lively, well-researched account of a powerful woman."
"On occasion she seems to exhaust even her biographer into mild syntactic blunder."
"Mesta's larger-than-life persona shines in journalist Gordon's deeply sourced narrative."
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