Patricia Beard is the author of ten non-fiction books and one novel. Her subjects combine social history—the portrait of an era—with the dramatic stories of men and women who influenced, and were influenced by their times. The periods she writes about range from the Gilded Age to the present day. Beard's main characters experience success and rejoicing, failure and despair, each set in a time with its own distinctive personality.
A former features editor at Town & Country and Mirabella, and a former contributing editor at ELLE, Beard has interviewed subjects from A-list movie stars to the Secretary General of the United Nations.