Inside the Plaza: An Intimate Portrait of the Ultimate Hotel

What do Ward Morehouse III and Kay Thompson's Eloise have in common? The theater critic, playwright and author of a previous hotel biography (The Waldorf-Astoria: America's Gilded Dream) and the six-year-old scamp both did some growing up at New York's fabled Plaza Hotel. In Inside The Plaza: An Intimate Portrait of the Ultimate Hotel, Morehouse details its sparkling history, from the architectural (the hotel's gables and balconies were fashioned by hand) to the social (at the masked ball Truman Capote threw for Katherine Graham, Candice Bergen wore a mask topped with bunny ears). Toss in stories (and black-and-white photographs) of nightclub chanteuses, rock stars and American royalty, as well as tidbits about underground railroad tracks for transporting coal and Prohibition-era liquor sales, and it's an entertaining read for travelers and homebodies alike. (Nov.)