Yale Library Book Talk: Debby Applegate, “Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age”

Yale University Library will launch Yale Library Book Talk, a new series of author events, with an online talk by historian and Pulitzer Prize winner Debby Applegate, whose newest book is Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age (Doubleday, Nov. 2021).

Described by the New York times as “a breathless tale told through extraordinary research,” Madam brings alive a Russian tailor’s daughter who became the most well-known New York brothel owner of the Roaring ’20s and played hostess to everyone from gangsters and politicians to Dorothy Parker and other members of the famed Algonquin Round Table. Applegate, a New Haven resident, will offer an inside look at the 12-year research and writing process that began when she “met” her subject while browsing in Sterling Memorial Library’s seven-story stack tower.