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Stephen Birmingham


Stephen Gardner Birmingham (May 28, 1929 – November 15, 2015) was an American author known for his social histories of wealthy American families, often focusing on ethnicity — Jews (his "Jewish trilogy": Our Crowd, The Grandees, The Rest of Us), African-Americans (Certain People), Irish (Real Lace), and the Anglo-Dutch (America's Secret Aristocracy). He also wrote several novels, also about wealthy people.

Born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1929 to Thomas Birmingham and Editha Gardner Birmingham, Stephen Birmingham attended The Hotchkiss School and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Williams College in 1950. He was a teacher of writing at the University of Cincinnati and also studied for a time in England. He married Janet Tillson in 1953 and they had three children, but later divorced.

Birmingham had a great interest in the upper classes, and wrote numerous books about the wealthy in the United States, generally focusing on their ethnicity, national origins, and geographic locale. His biographies include those of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Wallis Warfield Windsor, and novelist John Marquand. His study of the African-American upper classCertain People — generated some controversy. His trilogy of books on American Jews: Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York, The Grandees: America`s Sephardic Elite, and The Rest of Us: The Rise of America’s Eastern European Jews are perhaps his best known works.

Birmingham died on November 16, 2015 at the age of 86 in New York City, from lung cancer.

Short stories

Novels



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Wikipedia

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