LAURENCE LEAMER

Laurence Leamer is a New York Times best-selling author of 13 books, including his trilogy on the Kennedy family, The Kennedy Women, The Kennedy Men, and Sons of Camelot.  His newest book is Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach (Hyperion). Well regarded as an expert on the Kennedys, the Reagans, wealth in America, and American politics, he has been featured in the New York Times, People, New York Daily News, Miami Herald, Palm Beach Post, and AP, and has appeared on NBC Nightly News, Dateline NBC, ABC’s 20/20, CNN, NPR, and has been a consultant on MSNBC. Leamer is also a seasoned lecturer who has appeared across the country at a variety of organizations and clubs.

In Madness Under the Royal Palms he takes readers inside the parties and the clubs, behind the doors of the toniest addresses and into the scandals and the tragedies of some of the wealthiest families in the country.  His trenchant reportage captures the clash between old money and new, religion and status, and the love, lust, and fatal hatreds that determine the shape of that fiercely protected society. It is the other story about money in America. Leamer’s exposé of what lies behind Palm Beach’s exclusive facade is a compelling – and timely – narrative.

Leamer has written magazine articles for many publications including Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, New York, Playboy, and the Washingtonian.  Leamer worked incognito in a West Virginia coal mine and covered the war in Bangladesh for Harper’s.  That article won a citation from the Overseas Press Club for “Best Magazine Reporting.” He was also an associate editor at Newsweek. 

In addition to the Kennedy books, Leamer has written: Playing for Keeps in Washington, named a notable book of the year by the New York Times; a novel, Assignment, about Peru’s cocaine traffic; Ascent: The Spiritual and Physical Quest of Willi Unsoeld, movie rights optioned by Robert Redford; Make-Believe: The Life of Nancy and Ronald Reagan; King of the Night: The Life of Johnny Carson; the definitive portrait of the late star; and his controversial best-selling biography of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Fantastic.

Leamer is a graduate of Antioch College, was a Ford Fellow in International Development at the University of Oregon and an International Fellow at Columbia University.  He also was a Ford Research Fellow in Japan. At the Columbia University School of Journalism, Leamer graduated second in his class and was named a Pulitzer International Fellow. 

Leamer lives with his wife, the former Vesna Obradovic, in Palm Beach, Florida and Washington, D.C.