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Steve Bergsman (born September 18, 1949)[i] is an American author, journalist and travel writer. After decades as an editor and freelance writer, Bergsman turned his attention to books, publishing 17 between 2004 and 2024: five books on real estate; two travel books; a memoir/social history of Levittown, New York; three historical novels about early rock ‘n’ rollers; two co-write singer/songwriter memoirs; and four books about the music/entertainment world. His biography of Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame member Clyde McPhatter will be published in 2025 by the University Press of Mississippi. Bergsman also completed “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” a history of the Shirelles, which he co-wrote with original member Beverly Lee, but that book has not been published yet.

BACKGROUND

Steve Bergsman was born in Manhattan, the son of Gilbert Bergsman and Beatrice Oestreicher Bergsman. He has one sister, Barbara, born in 1946. At the time, the Bergsman family lived in the Bronx, but moved to the borough of Queens, where the family lived for four years from 1950 to 1954. In 1954, they moved to America’s first mass suburban development, Levittown, New York. Built by developer William Levitt in the years 1948 and 1949,[ii] it was a huge success attracting World War II veterans busy raising families and desperate for new housing.

From kindergarten through twelfth grade, Bergsman spent his entire school years in the Island Trees School District, graduating in 1967. He then attended the University of Florida, majoring in journalism and graduating in 1971 as a member Kappa Tau Alpha, the journalism honor society. The following year, he went west to work on a Masters degree at the University of Utah, where he was one of the first two students to major in film at that school.[iii] Although he did shoot two documentary films on the Vietnam War protest movement in Salt Lake City, which he has since donated to KUED, the University of Utah Public Television Station.[iv] Bergsman’s intention was to become film critic. His thesis, and first published book, was Film Criticism As Seen Through The Eyes of Film Critics. Published by the University of Utah in 1972, Bergsman interviewed many of the country’s leading film critics at that time.

In 1972, after completing his Masters, Bergsman moved to Manhattan, where he ended up teaching and getting his M.Ed. from Antioch College. In Manhattan, he met Wendy Goldstein. They were married in 1974. In 1976, they moved in Mesa, Arizona, where their two boys, Ethan and Aaron, were born. [v]

CAREER                                                 

After teaching journalism at the colleges in the Phoenix area,[vi] creating a magazine called Taxing Times for a local accounting firm, and freelancing for the Mesa Tribune[vii], Bergsman was hired by the Arizona Republic/Phoenix Gazette’s legal paper, the Arizona Weekly Gazette. A year later, he was named managing editor and he transformed the weekly into the Arizona Business Gazette.[viii] He also won his first Arizona Press Club award[ix] for Investigative Reporting for a story on bank redlining.[x] He would receive other awards from the Arizona Press Club including Business Story of the Year for an article he freelanced for Phoenix Magazine.[xi] The story he wrote was about a tech entrepreneur who died of AIDS. During these years Bergsman interviewed presidents, vice presidents, foreign politicians such as Cyril Ramaphosa before he became president of South Africa, and business leaders. He was the only Arizona reporter to live-cover the Sandra Day O’Connor invocation for the Supreme Court.[xii] It was during his years at the Arizona Business Gazette that Bergsman began regularly contributing to Barron’s magazine, mostly writing stories about real estate trends, but he also, for Barron’s, interviewed Miguel De La Madrid, the president of Mexico, aboard the Mexican version of Air Force One.[xiii] The outside work came in handy when Bergsman left the Arizona Business Gazette in 1988 and began freelancing full-time. It was a boom time for business magazines and Bergsman wrote for dozens of them, plus the New York Times,[xiv] Fortune[xv] and numerous wire services. It was also during this time Bergsman began a secondary career as a travel writer. He would end up visiting 145 countries and exotic lands.[xvi]

BOOKS

Bergsman’s specialty was real estate and as writer Jesse Beruba noted, Bergsman earned a “reputation as a reputable real estate writer – the best known in the country.”[xvii] So, when publisher John Wiley & Sons sought a writer to do a real estate investment book, Bergsman got the call. The result was Maverick Real Estate Investing: The Art of Buying and Selling Properties Like Trump, Zell, Simon and the World’s Greatest Land Owners, [xviii]published in 2004. That’s when Bergsman got lucky. “Unbeknownst to Bergsman at the time of publishing, Donald Trump – a titular mogul in Bergsman’s book – was launching his reality TV series The Apprentice. With Trump plastered on every billboard, commercial and magazine cover, Maverick Real Estate Investing was poised for success. In little time, it became number 36 on Amazon’s bestseller list.”[xix]

After “Maverick Real Estate Investing,” Bergsman wrote three more real estate books for John Wiley & Sons: Maverick Real Estate Financing: The Art of Raising Capital and Owning Properties Like Ross, Sanders, and Carey” (2006)[xx]; Passport To Exotic Real Estate: Buying U.S. And Foreign Property In Breathtaking, Beautiful, Faraway Lands (2008)[xxi]; and After The Fall: Opportunities For Real Estate Investing In The Coming Decade (2009). [xxii]He then co-wrote with property magnate Ronald McRae, a book about investing in raw land: Transforming Dirt Into Gold: Land Investments, Finding Opportunity Where Others Fail To See It” (2016)[xxiii].

Returning to his roots, Bergsman published a memoir/social history of Levittown, New York, about growing up in America’s first modern suburb. The book, Growing Up Levittown: In A Time of Conformity, Controversy and Cultural Crisis, was originally published in 2011 by Dancing Traveler, a Vancouver publishing house, which published two of Bergsman’s books before going out of business. Bergsman took back the rights to his books and created his own imprint SMB COMM to republish the books.[xxiv]

SMB COMM published the first of Bergsman’s travel books, Hobnobbing With Ghosts: A Literature And Lyric Junkie Travels The World in 2016[xxv], but Abuzz Press in 2021 published the follow-up travel book, Hobnobbing With Ghosts II: A Lyric And Literature Junkie Travels The World.[xxvi]

Dancing Traveler also published in 2012, the first book, The Death of Johnny Ace, in Bergsman’s historical-fiction trilogy of the music world called the R&B Set. The second and third books, The Seduction of Mary Wells and The Friends of Billy Preston were published by SMB COMM in 2015 and 2016, respectively. [xxvii]

Two important things coalesced with Bergsman in regard to the R&B Set. The first was that it was too time-consuming to run a publishing imprint and he liked writing about the pioneering musicians of the rock world. He shifted fully to non-fiction. Feral Press published his I Put A Spell On You: The Bizarre Life of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins[xxviii] (2019), and University Press of Mississippi published Chapel Of Love: The Story of New Orleans Girl Group The Dixie Cups (2021), co-written with Rosa Hawkins, an original member of the group.[xxix]

Due to the COVID epidemic and resulting supply chain issues, the publication of a couple of Bergsman’s books was postponed resulting in four of his books being published in one year. The first two of his books to be published in 2023 were Earth Angels: The Short Lives and Controversial Deaths of Three R&B Pioneers[xxx] (Texas A&M University Press) and The Wanderers: Killer Teens, Rebel Teens, Gang Teens and the Evolution of the Last Great Greaser Feature[xxxi] (BearManor Media). Bergsman’s last two books published in 2023 were a two-book set concerning the Black and white female singers of the 1950s. The book about the white pop singers of the era is All I Want Is Loving You: Popular Female Singers of the 1950s[xxxii] and the second book about the Black singers is What A Difference A Day Makes: Women Who Conquered 1950s Music.[xxxiii] Both were published by the University Press of Mississippi.

In 2025, BearManor Media published Bergsman’s co-write of singer/songwriter Carol Connor’s memoir Elvis, Rocky & Me.[xxxiv] Not done yet; the University Press of Mississippi has picked up Bergsman biography of singer Clyde McPhatter, Have Mercy Baby: The Heartbreaking Secret Life of Clyde McPhatter, The Seductive Voice of Pop Music at the Dawn of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

[i]  Jesse Berude, “With Gusto: The Career Composition of Writer Steve Bergsman,”  College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida, 2021

[ii] The Controversial History of Levittown, America's First Suburb - Untapped New York (untappedcities.com)

[iii]  Jesse Berude, “With Gusto: The Career Composition of Writer Steve Bergsman,” College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida, 2021

[iv] “Utah Vietnam War Stories – Escalation,” PBS, Photography & Acknowledgements: Steve Bergsman, https://www.pbs.org/show/utah-vietname-war-stories/

[v] Paul Maryniak, “Mesa Author’s Rock n’ Roll Books a Blast from the Past,” Mesa Tribune, November 18, 2023

[vi] Ted Rushton, “Novels Take Work, Instructor Says,” Mesa Tribune, ? date 1979

[vii] Steve Bergsman, “Girl Group Relives ‘60s In Every Show,” Mesa Tribune, December 25, 1988, www.themesatribune.com

[viii] Commentary: Mergers/Corporate Constipation,” Arizona Business Gazette, Page 9, October 14, 1985

[ix] 14 on Republic Staff Win Press Club Awards, Arizona Republic, 1980

[x] Steven Bergsman, “Arizona Bank Under Fire: Bucking Discrimination Charges,” Arizona Weekly Gazette, Page 1, September 9, 1980

[xi] Steve Bergsman, “Global Strife,” Phoenix, Page 108, July 1992

[xii] Steven Bergsman, “Supreme Court Welcomes O’Connor,” Arizona Business Gazette, Page 1, September 29, 1981

[xiii] Steve Bergsman, “South of the Border: Mexico’s President Examines the State of His Nation,” Page 32, November 18, 1983

[xiv] Steve Bergsman, “Balancing Conservation and Economic Growth,” New York Times, July 7, 1996

[xv] Steve Bergsman, “Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities: Wall Street Takes the Lead in Real Estate Financing,” Fortune, Page 173, October 17, 1994

[xvi] Steve Bergsman, Hobnobbing With Ghosts: A Literature and Lyric Junkie Travels the World, Page 14, SMB Comm, 2016

[xvii] Jesse Berude, “With Gusto: The Career Composition of Writer Steve Bergsman,” College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida, 2021

[xviii] Amazon.com : Bergsman

[xix] Jesse Berude, “With Gusto: The Career Composition of Writer Steve Bergsman,” College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida, 2021

[xx] Amazon.com : Bergsman

[xxi] Amazon.com : Bergsman

[xxii] Amazon.com : Bergsman

[xxiii]Amazon.com: Steve Bergsman: books, biography, latest update

[xxiv] Amazon.com : Bergsman

[xxv] Amazon.com : Bergsman

[xxvi] Amazon.com : Bergsman

[xxvii] Amazon.com : Bergsman

[xxviii] Amazon.com : Bergsman

[xxix] Amazon.com : Bergsman

[xxx] Amazon.com : Bergsman

[xxxi] Amazon.com : Bergsman

[xxxii] Amazon.com : Bergsman

[xxxiii] Amazon.com : Bergsman

[xxxiv] Amazon.com : Bergsman