A highly readable social history that contains all of the juicy drama of a prime-time soap opera.
Downton Abbey fans will swoon over this trip through the privileged turn-of-the-century world of cash, class, and coronets.
Anyone seeking to fill the void left by the ending of the hit TV series need look no further than this comprehensive work penned by one of the period’s leading chroniclers. De Courcy (Margot at War: Love and Betrayal in Downing Street, 1912-1916, 2014, etc.) brings the Victorian and Edwardian eras vibrantly to life with her meticulously well-researched book, conveyed in an approachable prose style. Though the narrative’s central focus is the 454 American women who married into the British aristocracy between 1870 and 1914, the scope is far broader than just the ladies themselves. To demonstrate the complicated gender and class relations within the period, the author spends considerable time explaining the sociopolitical ramifications that led to these unusual marriages, some of which ended up being love matches. De Courcy explores everything from the differences in education for American girls versus their English counterparts to their value as progeny within their families, and she ably explains the particular fascination American women held for British nobles. In the 19th century, the right dress, jewels, upbringing, carriage, and conversation effectively demonstrated female power. Like Scheherazade, the author weaves tales of royalty, millionaires, dress makers, and social climbers who render the Edwardian era a tangled web of wealth and intrigue that continues to fascinate readers, filmmakers, and TV writers. Famous “dollar-princesses” Jennie Jerome and Consuelo Vanderbilt receive their own chapters, but the most entertaining sections center on lesser-known heiresses such as the Machiavellian Marietta Stevens and the irrepressible “marrying Wilsons.” The author’s occasional repetition of details—e.g., the girls’ physical characteristics—is unnecessary, but the approachable narration and attention to detail make up for any deficiencies.
A highly readable social history that contains all of the juicy drama of a prime-time soap opera.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-16459-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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