64 books like Who Killed Society?

By Cleveland Amory,

Here are 64 books that Who Killed Society? fans have personally recommended if you like Who Killed Society?. Shepherd is a community of 10,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of "Our Crowd": The Great Jewish Families of New York

Michael Gross Author Of Rogues' Gallery: The Secret Story of the Lust, Lies, Greed, and Betrayals That Made the Metropolitan Museum of Art

From my list on American High Society.

Why am I passionate about this?

I started my career writing about rock music. Rock stars dated models, and I soon started writing about them, too, which led me to cover the fashion world, where I was often seated near the rich and famous at runway shows in London, Paris, Milan, and New York, and began to study them. Thus began years of reading and writing about Society, first for The New York Times and New York magazine, and later in a series of books on the worlds of the rich and the famous. The latest, Flight of the WASP: The Rise, Fall, and Future of America's Original Ruling Class, will be published this fall.  

Michael's book list on American High Society

Michael Gross Why did Michael love this book?

After the WASPs of The Social Register, the next great wave of American wealth was generated by the German-Jewish upper class that rose at the end of the 19th Century. Weaving together the stories of the Loeb, Lehman, Lewisohn, Schiff, Seligman, Goldman, Straus, Warburg, and Guggenheim families, Birmingham created a classic of the kind of group biography I aspire to write.  

By Stephen Birmingham,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked "Our Crowd" as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

They immigrated to America from Germany in the nineteenth century with names like Loeb, Sachs, Seligman, Lehman, Guggenheim, and Goldman. From tenements on the Lower East Side to Park Avenue mansions, this handful of Jewish families turned small businesses into imposing enterprises and amassed spectacular fortunes. But despite possessing breathtaking wealth that rivaled the Astors and Rockefellers, they were barred by the gentile establishment from the lofty realm of "the 400," a register of New York's most elite, because of their religion and humble backgrounds. In response, they created their own elite "100," a privileged society as opulent and exclusive…


Book cover of The Rich and Other Atrocities

Michael Gross Author Of Rogues' Gallery: The Secret Story of the Lust, Lies, Greed, and Betrayals That Made the Metropolitan Museum of Art

From my list on American High Society.

Why am I passionate about this?

I started my career writing about rock music. Rock stars dated models, and I soon started writing about them, too, which led me to cover the fashion world, where I was often seated near the rich and famous at runway shows in London, Paris, Milan, and New York, and began to study them. Thus began years of reading and writing about Society, first for The New York Times and New York magazine, and later in a series of books on the worlds of the rich and the famous. The latest, Flight of the WASP: The Rise, Fall, and Future of America's Original Ruling Class, will be published this fall.  

Michael's book list on American High Society

Michael Gross Why did Michael love this book?

I was fortunate to cross paths with Curtis when I went to work for what were called the women’s pages” of The New York Times, which she had written for and edited before rising to the exalted op-ed page. When I got that job, my soon-to-be wife gave me a copy of this book—a collection of Curtis dispatches from the front lines of Society—and said, “This is what you can do if you’re good at it.”

By Charlotte Curtis,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Rich and Other Atrocities as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The rich and other atrocities [Jan 01, 1976] Curtis, Charlotte


Book cover of People Like Us

Michael Gross Author Of Rogues' Gallery: The Secret Story of the Lust, Lies, Greed, and Betrayals That Made the Metropolitan Museum of Art

From my list on American High Society.

Why am I passionate about this?

I started my career writing about rock music. Rock stars dated models, and I soon started writing about them, too, which led me to cover the fashion world, where I was often seated near the rich and famous at runway shows in London, Paris, Milan, and New York, and began to study them. Thus began years of reading and writing about Society, first for The New York Times and New York magazine, and later in a series of books on the worlds of the rich and the famous. The latest, Flight of the WASP: The Rise, Fall, and Future of America's Original Ruling Class, will be published this fall.  

Michael's book list on American High Society

Michael Gross Why did Michael love this book?

When I was a boy, I dreamed of writing pop fiction. As a young writer in the 1980s, I was riveted by the novels of Dominick Dunne, a former film and TV producer who’d started covering Society as a journalist for Vanity Fair, but also wrote novels where he told the sort of stories that couldn’t get past fact-checkers and libel lawyers. This one is the most trenchant and revealing book ever written about the “Nouvelle Society” of the Reagan years. It’s as delicious as dinner used to be at Le Cirque.

By Dominick Dunne,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked People Like Us as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Before they had Too Much Money, the inhabitants of Dominick Dunne’s glitzy, gossipy New York Times bestselling novels were People Like Us.

The way journalist Gus Bailey tells it, old money is always preferred, but occasionally new money sneaks in–even where it is most unwelcome. After moving from Cincinnati, Elias and Ruby Renthal strike it even richer in New York, turning their millions into billions. It would be impolite for high society to refuse them now. Not to mention disadvantageous. As long as the market is strong, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about–except for those nasty secrets from the past.…


Book cover of Privileged Lives

Michael Gross Author Of Rogues' Gallery: The Secret Story of the Lust, Lies, Greed, and Betrayals That Made the Metropolitan Museum of Art

From my list on American High Society.

Why am I passionate about this?

I started my career writing about rock music. Rock stars dated models, and I soon started writing about them, too, which led me to cover the fashion world, where I was often seated near the rich and famous at runway shows in London, Paris, Milan, and New York, and began to study them. Thus began years of reading and writing about Society, first for The New York Times and New York magazine, and later in a series of books on the worlds of the rich and the famous. The latest, Flight of the WASP: The Rise, Fall, and Future of America's Original Ruling Class, will be published this fall.  

Michael's book list on American High Society

Michael Gross Why did Michael love this book?

This one is a bit of an obscurity. Another roman a clef from the 1980s, it’s a murder mystery set in Manhattan Society, only this time, it’s about the ways the high and mighty get down and dirty—and at the time, it was said to be based on several very real Upper East Side New York gentleman whose behavior was anything but gentle. At the time, many knew but no one talked about the sleaze and moral corruption that lurked in the dark corners of the world of wealth. I heard enough and saw enough to think that Stewart knew a lot.  

By Edward Stewart,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Privileged Lives as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

New York, its wealth, decadence and crime levels are the subject of this novel which tells the intertwining tales of a rich society queen's sudden recovery from coma and the discovery of a mutiliated corpse. When Lieutenant Vince Cordoza begins to investigate, he gradually finds links between the two seemingly unconnected events. What he finds is dirty, explosive and gruesome and involves not only the society queen's family, but the whole fabric of New York, rich and poor alike.


Book cover of As If an Enemy's Country: The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution

Eliot Pattison Author Of Freedom's Ghost: A Mystery of the American Revolution

From my list on inside the hearts and minds of the American Revolution.

Why am I passionate about this?

I found my first arrowhead at age seven and have been hooked on history ever since. My Bone Rattler series—Freedom’s Ghost is the seventh installment—builds on many years of research and field trips, supplemented by intense investigation of specific aspects leading up to and during the writing of each novel. The volatile 18th century was one of the most important periods in all of history, and I immerse myself in it when writing these books—by, among other things, reading newspapers of the day, which are often stacked on my desk. 

Eliot's book list on inside the hearts and minds of the American Revolution

Eliot Pattison Why did Eliot love this book?

I deeply enjoyed Archer’s book for its intimate depiction of Boston’s life under British occupation from 1768 until mid-1770.

It was a city under siege in many respects, with four thousand troops in a community of only sixteen thousand souls. The city’s streets –mostly paved with oyster shell—come to life with details on tavern fare, street life, troop encampment, epidemics, the violent celebrations of the annual Pope’s Day, popular song parodies, and the three hundred women who initiated a boycott of foreign tea.

Here too you can meet early patriot leaders like James Otis, who was rendered “insane” by a blow to the skull by a furious tax collector and wandered, raving, for years, until he was struck down by a lightning bolt. Archer’s book pulls you into the torment and the glory of life in a powder keg destined to explode.

By Richard Archer,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked As If an Enemy's Country as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the dramatic few years when colonial Americans were galvanized to resist British rule, perhaps nothing did more to foment anti-British sentiment than the armed occupation of Boston. As If an Enemy's Country is Richard Archer's gripping narrative of those critical months between October 1, 1768 and the winter of 1770 when Boston was an occupied town.
Bringing colonial Boston to life, Archer deftly moves between the governor's mansion and cobblestoned back-alleys as he traces the origins of the colonists' conflict with Britain. He reveals the maneuvering of colonial political leaders such as Governor Francis Bernard, Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson,…


Book cover of Sketchtasy

Tim Murphy Author Of Speech Team

From my list on LGBTQ+ characters who are a total mess.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a 54-year-old gay man who has led my own messy life here in New York City, marked as much by sex, romance, friendship, and culture as by drug addiction, relationship drama, mental illness and youthful trauma. I’ve published five novels, all of which contain queer characters who’ve not exactly been poster children for mainstream-world-approved LGBTQ behavior. I’m drawn to novels like the ones I’ve mentioned because they show queer people not as the hetero world often would like them to be—sanitized, asexual, witty and “fabulous”—but as capable of dysfunction, mediocrity, unwise choices and poor conduct as anybody else.

Tim's book list on LGBTQ+ characters who are a total mess

Tim Murphy Why did Tim love this book?

One of the most kinetic books I read a few years back and told in a kind of beautiful, white-hot stream of consciousness, Sketchtasy is the tale of young, genderqueer Alexa and her friends navigating pleasure and survival in mid-90s, AIDS-battered Boston.

This is no “model LGBTQ person” book; Alexa and her friends, scarred by trauma and addled by every recreational drug on the planet, are creatures of the night, showing off outrageous looks in the clubs and turning tricks to pay the rent and put food in their mouths.

It’s a breakneck-paced look at both exuberant and terrified young queer people right before HIV went from being a near death sentence to a chronic manageable disease. 

By Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Sketchtasy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Sketchtasy takes place in that late-night moment when everything comes together, and everything falls apart—it’s an urgent, glittering, devastating novel about the perils of queer world-making in the mid-‘90s.

This is Boston in 1995, a city defined by a rabid fear of difference. Alexa, an incisive twenty-one-year-old queen, faces everyday brutality with determined nonchalance. Rejecting middle-class pretensions, she negotiates past and present traumas with a scathing critique of the world. Drawn to the ecstasy of drugged-out escapades, Alexa searches for nourishment in a gay culture bonded by clubs and conformity, willful apathy, and the specter of AIDS. Is there any…


Book cover of Whiskey Beach

Marie Jones Author Of Those We Trust

From my list on leave you breathless with love, danger, and suspense.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love romance, a true romantic from the day I was born. I also love crime/thriller/twists and turns that keep you on the edge of your seat and wanting to turn the page. As a writer, it was the most natural choice to combine all of these to bring to you as a reader love, passion, danger, shady criminal underworld, and jaw-dropping cliffhangers mixed in with twists you never saw coming. A love story that has you hopelessly entwined with them. A beautiful backdrop of the highlands of Scotland that creates its own unique story –mystical, mighty, and carrying its own hidden dangers.

Marie's book list on leave you breathless with love, danger, and suspense

Marie Jones Why did Marie love this book?

Eli is a broken man, running from his own demons and past and looking for a safe haven at Whiskey Beach (just like the character from my book, Sophia). 

He believes he has nothing to give, certainly not as a writer... until Abra comes into his life. Yet dangers are lurking near and they are both being watched. Love, danger, and a beautiful setting. 

By Nora Roberts,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Whiskey Beach as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Eli Landon seems to have the perfect life. A beautiful wife, a wonderful house, a dazzling legal career. But when his wife is brutally murdered after confessing to an affair, Eli is named prime suspect. After a year-long ordeal the case is dropped for lack of evidence, but Eli's world is in tatters.

Abandoned by his friends, hounded by the media and a detective with a grudge, Eli retreats to the small-town sanctuary of Whiskey Beach. Camping out in his grandmother's atmospheric house by the sea he meets Abra Walsh - compassionate, courageous and hiding secrets of her own.

But…


Book cover of Most Wanted: The Revolutionary Partnership of John Hancock & Samuel Adams

Beth Anderson Author Of Cloaked in Courage: Uncovering Deborah Sampson, Patriot Soldier

From my list on children’s stories on the American Revolution.

Why am I passionate about this?

As an educator, I’ve experienced the power of true stories to engage readers, widen their world, spur thinking, and support content areas. I’ve learned plenty from these books, too! As an author, I’m fascinated with many aspects of the American Revolution that I never learned about as a student. Researching this time period has revealed much more than men at war. The revolution affected every aspect of life—a “world turned upside-down.” Today, we’re fortunate to have a range of stories that help kids understand that history is about people much like them facing the challenges of their time and place. 

Beth's book list on children’s stories on the American Revolution

Beth Anderson Why did Beth love this book?

You may recognize the names of revolutionary era patriots Samuel Adams and John Hancock, an unlikely duo, who led the resistance against British rule in Massachusetts. The British, too, knew their names—but they called them troublemakers.

Here’s a peek behind the scenes of the battles of Lexington and Concord, when the two men barely escaped capture by the redcoats. I love these kinds of stories that make history come alive and allow us to see the real people in action facing challenges and decisions. 

By Sarah Jane Marsh, Edwin Fotheringham (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Most Wanted as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 6, 7, 8, and 9.

What is this book about?


John Hancock and Samuel Adams were an unlikely pair of troublemakers. Hancock was young and dashing. Adams was old and stodgy. But working together, they rallied the people of Boston against the unfair policies of Great Britain and inspired American resistance. And to King George, they became a royal pain.

When the British army began marching toward Lexington and Concord, sending Hancock and Adams fleeing into the woods, the two men couldn't help but worry--this time, had they gone too far?

Rich with historical detail and primary sources, this spirited tale takes readers through ten years of taxes and tea-tossing,…


Book cover of The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft

Tim Maleeny Author Of Hanging the Devil

From my list on planning an art heist.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always been fascinated by art, not just the paintings themselves but their historical significance, the personalities behind the canvas, and the seemingly arbitrary value placed on one artist’s work versus another. Writing my latest novel, Hanging the Devil, was a chance to delve into the illicit side of the art world, where forgers and smugglers consort with organized crime. I’ve been an award-winning mystery author for more than a decade—this is my sixth novel—and the great thing about writing crime fiction is the chance to get lost in the research and learn something new, so writing this novel was a great excuse to visit museums, talk to experts, and plan a heist!

Tim's book list on planning an art heist

Tim Maleeny Why did Tim love this book?

The biggest unsolved art crime is the 1990 robbery of the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston, during which two men disguised as policemen stole 13 works of art worth an estimated $500 million.

Not one of the stolen paintings has been recovered, and rumors about their whereabouts and the identity of the thieves continue to fuel investigations across the globe. This book is a rapid-fire read and a terrific crash course in the many challenges involved in tracing lost art, let alone ever catching the thieves.

When writing a mystery novel that opens with an audacious museum heist in the very first chapter, it’s probably a good idea to research the biggest museum robbery in history. The Gardner heist shocked the art world and revealed how many museums around the world have shockingly bad security protocols relative to most office buildings, let alone a bank, even though priceless art is…

By Ulrich Boser,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Gardner Heist as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Shortly after midnight on March 18, 1990, two men broke into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and committed the largest art heist in history. They stole a dozen masterpieces, including one Vermeer, three Rembrandts, and five Degas. But after thousands of leads, hundreds of interviews, and a $5 million reward, not a single painting has been recovered. Worth as much as $500 million, the missing masterpieces have become the Holy Grail of the art world and their theft one of the nation's most extraordinary unsolved mysteries. Art detective Harold Smith worked the theft for years, and after his…


Book cover of Make Way for Ducklings

Suzanne Preston Blier Author Of The Streets of Newtowne: A Story of Cambridge, MA

From my list on the idea of streets, history, and places.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an art and architectural historian whose field also includes the histories of cities. My area of specialty is Africa. I am also a professor at Harvard who has lived in Cambridge, Ma. for over 30 years where I have become a civic leader, co-founding the Harvard Square Neighborhood Association to help bring improvements to the city and preserve historic buildings here. I teach a class on Harvard Square (and the city of Cambridge) and following January 6, I felt it was important to rethink the way we teach young people – encouraging them to understand the diversity of all our communities. 

Suzanne's book list on the idea of streets, history, and places

Suzanne Preston Blier Why did Suzanne love this book?

This is a wonderfully told local story that is a classic for area residents and visitors, where the key characters are not humans – but birds.

The book provides a wonderful sense of how important geography and place are to humans and animals alike. The story is in many respects a personal one that highlights the ongoing power of individual relationships and families. This is a book whose wonderful illustrations amplify the story as one is reading it to children.

By Robert McCloskey,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Make Way for Ducklings as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 4, 5, 6, and 7.

What is this book about?

This brilliantly illustrated, amusingly observed tale of Mallards on the move has won the hearts of generations of readers. Awarded the Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children in 1941, it has since become a favourite of millions. This classic tale of the famous Mallard ducks of Boston is available for the first time in a full-sized paperback edition. Make Way for Ducklings has been described as "one of the merriest picture books ever" (The New York Times). Ideal for reading aloud, this book deserves a place of honor on every child's bookshelf.


5 book lists we think you will like!

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