Heroes And Villains

Steven Gaines has been writing about the East Hampton scene for decades, and Heroes and Villains is one of his fuller treatments of the artists, writers, and money people who built the modern Hamptons culture. The book covers the post-war influx of New York’s bohemian and intellectual class, the slow takeover by financial money, and the various scandals that defined the place across decades.

Gaines is connected. He has the access most journalists envy, and the book reads like the work of someone who has been at most of the dinner parties he describes.

The celebrity detail is the obvious draw. The deeper interest, for some readers, is the way Gaines documents how a place changes when the people who made it desirable are pushed out by the people who can afford it.

For readers who liked Plimpton’s biographies or Peter Biskind’s Hollywood books, this is in similar territory.