Michael Gross, who began his career contributing to Circus, Rock and other publications, is recognized by friends and foes alike as one of America's most provocative journalists. "Much feared for his razor-like observations, Michael Gross is no stranger to sensational investigative reportage," says nationally syndicated columnist Liz Smith. "Gross turns into an old softie when confronted with the beauty, terror, passion and pity of a serious true tale. And when he is inspired by his subject, Gross can be as evocative as Proust."

Michael Gross has just published his latest book, Genuine Authentic, a highly acclaimed biography of fashion designer Ralph Lauren. Gross is also a Contributing Editor of Travel & Leisure and a Contributing Writer at Radar. He was previously a columnist for the Daily News in New York, a Contributing Editor of Talk and New York and a Senior Editor at George. His last book, My Generation, a generational biography of the Baby Boom, was published in March 2000. It was called "trenchant, well-dramatized, thought provoking annd unusual" by Kirkus Reviews and "hugely entertaining...a brilliantly reported story," by the Orlando Sentinel.

Gross's 1995 book, Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women, was an investigative triumph, a highly-acclaimed look at the history and mores of the fashion-modeling business. It was a New York Times bestseller, and a selection of the Quality Paperback Book Club, and is in development as a feature film. Model was republished in trade paperback, with a new epilogue, by HarperPerennial in January, 2003, eight years after its first publication, and was also published in France, the U. K., Canada, Australia, Germany, Japan, Brazil, and China.

Over the last fifteen years Gross has profiled such subjects as John F. Kennedy Jr., Greta Garbo, Stephanie of Monaco, Richard Gere, Alec Baldwin, Madonna, and Ivana Trump; fashion figures Tina Chow, Calvin Klein, Diane von Furstenberg, Isaac Mizrahi, Ralph Lauren, and Steven Meisel, and he's written on topics as diverse as plastic surgery, divorce, the A-List, Sex in the 90s and Greenwich Village-the last in an article that introduced the phrase "quality of life" into New York City's 1993 mayoral campaign. Gross has covered the media in his GQ column, "The Chattering Class" and in feature stories on Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief Norman Pearlstine, Tina Brown and The New Yorker; Hearst Magazines, and the style war between Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. For Travel & Leisure, he's written about chic destinations like St-Tropez, St. Barthèlèmy, the French Riviera, Belize and Capri.

Earlier, Mr. Gross was a reporter for the New York Times, a senior writer at Esquire, a contributor to CBS This Morning, and a columnist at GQ. His writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, Interview, Details, Elle, TV Guide, Architectural Digest, American Photo, Town & Country, Cosmopolitan, and the now-defunct Manhattan Inc., Saturday Review, and Mademoiselle; and newspapers like the Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, the Village Voice, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Chicago Tribune.

In England, he has been a columnist at Tatler and has written for Harper's & Queen, the Times and the Sunday Times, the Evening Standard, the Sunday Express, The Mail on Sunday, NME and Melody Maker. His work has also appeared in Elle, Paris Match, Optimum and Madame Figaro in France; El Pais in Spain; Figaro Japon in Japan; Focus, Max, Die Bunte and Manner Vogue in Germany; Mode in Australia; the South China Morning Post; Panorama and L'Espresso in Italy, and in many of the international editions of Vogue, Esquire and Cosmopolitan.

Before writing Model, Gross published several books on popular music--Robert Plant (Popular Library, 1974), Bob Dylan: An Illustrated History (Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), and The Rock Yearbook 1981 (Delilah/Grove, 1980)--and co-authored three mystery novels as D.G. Devon, Temple Kent (Ballantine 1982), Shattered Mask (Ballantine, 1983), and Precious Objects (Ballantine, 1984). He has also contributed to various books on fashion and the media and was editor-in-chief of both Rock, a national music magazine, and Fire Island News, a weekly newspaper.