The Woman Who Knew Everyone: The Power of Perle Mesta, Washington’s Most Famous Hostess by Meryl Gordon
Perle Mesta acquired many sobriquets during her long life. Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn called her “Perly-Whirly.” Aristocratic activist Daisy Harriman dismissed her as “Mrs. Thing.” To postwar Luxembourg, she was “Madame Minister.” But the nickname that endures comes from Ethel Merman’s brassy portrayal of her in Irving Berlin’s 1950 musical, Call Me Madam. Fifty years after her death, Perle Mesta is still “the Hostess with the Mostest.”
In The Woman Who Knew Everyone, Meryl Gordon charts her rise through society and politics from her plain Midwestern roots to the corridors, dinner tables, and ballrooms of power in Washington.
