Douglass Shand-Tucci's books include The Art of Scandal, the bestselling biography of Isabella Steward Gardner; Boston Bohemia, and Harvard University, with photographs by Richard Cheek and a foreword by Neil Rudenstine. The origin of his book The Crimson Letter is a speech Shand-Tucci, a 1972 graduate of Harvard College, gave to the Gay and Lesbian Caucus in 1997. He lives in Boston's Back Bay.