Summer Author Series
Author Nancy Rubin Stuart
American Empress: The Life and Times of Marjorie Merriweather Post
Join us for a special author-led presentation and book signing event as we welcome author Nancy Rubin Stuart. Nancy Rubin Stuart’s journalistic work includes New York Times, the Huffington Post, New England Quarterly, American History and other national magazines. Nancy serves as Executive Director of the Cape Cod Writers Center.
Non-Members: $5 per person
Museum Members: Free (Become a member here!)
About the Book
American Empress: The Life and Times of Marjorie Merriweather Post
American Empress is a sweeping history of the dramatic life of the much-married heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, the daughter of breakfast-cereal magnate C. W. Post and the builder of her estate Mar-A-Lago. Now in paperback, this widely acclaimed, best-selling book is the original biography of Mrs. Post and includes interviews with her relatives and friends.
As a young girl growing up in the Midwest, Marjorie Post helped glue cereal boxes in her father’s barn, later became a board member of his company, wed a diplomat, and by late middle age was widely acknowledged as the unofficial “Queen of Washington, D.C.”
The glamorous and warm-hearted Mrs. Post was also the mother to actress Dina Merrill. Throughout her life, she gave generously to hundreds of civic, artistic, and philanthropic causes, among which were the National Symphony Orchestra, the Washington Ballet, and the Kennedy Center. By virtue of her brains, beauty, and great wealth, Mrs. Post was a woman well ahead of her era, whose natural business acumen created the frozen foods industry and helped transform the Postum Cereal Company into the General Foods Corporation where she became a director.
About the Author
Nancy Rubin Stuart is an award-winning author and journalist who specializes in women, biography and social history. Born in Boston, Nancy graduated from Tufts University with a B.A. in English and an M.A.T. from Brown University. In 1995, Mount Vernon College, now part of Georgetown University, awarded her an honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters.
While raising children, Nancy wrote for the New York Times under the byline Nancy Rubin. That work and her experiences as a suburban wife and mother prompted her first book,The New Suburban Woman: Beyond Myth and Motherhood.
Subsequent books under that byline were The Mother Mirror: How a Generation of Women Is Changing Motherhood in America; Isabella of Castile: The First Renaissance Queen, and the best-selling American Empress: The Life and Times of Marjorie Merriweather Post.
Nancy also wrote for the A & E Network’s series “America’s Castles” and for HGTV’s series “Restore America.” In 2005 Harcourt published her biography on the co-founder of American spiritualism,The Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life of Maggie Fox which won an Outstanding Book Award for Nonfiction from the American Society of Authors and Journalists.
