Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century by Peter Graham

Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century by Peter Graham

384 pages

Published May 2013 by Skyhorse Publishing

Publisher's Summary: On June 22, 1954, teenage friends Juliet Hulme—better known as bestselling mystery writer Anne Perry—and Pauline Parker went for a walk in a New Zealand park with Pauline’s mother, Honora. Half an hour later, the girls returned alone, claiming that Pauline’s mother had had an accident. But when Honora Parker was found in a pool of blood with the brick used to bludgeon her to death close at hand, Juliet and Pauline were quickly arrested, and later confessed to the killing. Their motive? A plan to escape to the United States to become writers, and Honora’s determination to keep them apart. Their incredible story made shocking headlines around the world and would provide the subject for Peter Jackson’s Academy Award–nominated film, Heavenly Creatures. 

A sensational trial followed, with speculations about the nature of the girls’ relationship and possible insanity playing a key role. Among other things, Parker and Hulme were suspected of lesbianism, which was widely considered to be a mental illness at the time. This mesmerizing book offers a brilliant account of the crime and ensuing trial and shares dramatic revelations about the fates of the young women after their release from prison. With penetrating insight, this thorough analysis applies modern psychology to analyze the shocking murder that remains one of the most interesting cases of all time.

My Thoughts: 

I'm playing catch up on reviews so I'm going to just do a quick bullet point on this one. 

• I don't remember where I first heard about this book but the idea that a well-known author had been involved in a murder as a young woman intrigued me. How, I wondered, had she gotten past that to become a respected writer? 
• By the time I actually got around to reading the book, I'd forgotten that Anne Perry was actually Juliet Hulme and thought that she was involved in some other way. Except that I always, always look at the photo inserts in a book before I start reading so I quickly figured it out. 
• Both Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker had difficult childhoods that caused them to have attachment issues with their mothers. Neither mother was ideal - Honorah Rieper ran hot and cold and Hilda Hulme struggled to connect with her daughter at all. Juliet was considered quite pretty and very bright - she thought perhaps even more highly about herself because of this than did anyone else. Both girls clearly struggled with mental health issues. 
• That being said, so little was known about mental health as recently as the 1950's that both doctors and the judicial system struggled to explain how two girls who showed no remorse and clearly understood that what they did was wrong could also be mentally ill. Also, the idea that these two young ladies might be lesbians was a big story - inherently this seemed to make them worse people but did it mean that they were just worse people or even more mentally ill? It seemed that it must be one or the other. 
• If this happened today, it would still be big, international news. We'd still struggle with the idea of matricide and how two young girls could be so remorseless. 
• As bad as the penal system was in the 1950's, as terrible as the conditions in the places where these young women were sent were, they were both allowed to continue their educations and actually served very little time, relative to the crime they'd committed. What was even more strange was the fact that they were both treated so differently when they were released. Parker was force to stay in New Zealand on parole, while Hulme (who took on the name Perry because her mother had taken that name on after she became involved with a new man by that name) was allowed to travel to Britain. 
• The two women dealt with the aftermath of what they had done very differently. Parker appeared to be very repentant and lived a quiet, religious life, trying to stay out of the spotlight. Perry (whose name evolved to Anne Perry) was able to live without anyone knowing about her past and became quite wealthy and well known with her writing. In many interviews, after it was discovered who she was, she showed very little remorse. 
• Director Peter Jackson got his big break when he and his wife produced a film adaptation of the case. Heavenly Creatures starred Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey. Now I want to track that movie down. 
• Reviews on this one are very mixed. Some think it's terrific. I thought it particularly dragged in the middle and that Graham tried to stuff in everything that he'd learned about the case. At the end of the book, we learned what had happened to all of the people who had played a part in the trial - honestly, I didn't really care. I don't know what that says about me. Did I want it to be more sensational? Not particularly. But I also thought it was a story that should have better held my attention. 

Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist by Jennifer Wright

Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist by Jennifer Wright

Read by Mara Wilson

14 hours, 1 minute

Published February 2023 by Hachette Books

Publisher's Summary: 

An industrious immigrant who built her business from the ground up, Madame Restell was a self-taught surgeon on the cutting edge of healthcare in pre-Gilded Age New York, and her bustling “boarding house” provided birth control, abortions, and medical assistance to thousands of women—rich and poor alike. As her practice expanded, her notoriety swelled, and Restell established her-self as a prime target for tabloids, threats, and lawsuits galore. But far from fading into the background, she defiantly flaunted her wealth, parading across the city in designer clothes, expensive jewelry, and bejeweled carriages, rubbing her success in the faces of the many politicians, publishers, fellow physicians, and religious figures determined to bring her down. 

Unfortunately for Madame Restell, her rise to the top of her field coincided with “the greatest scam you’ve never heard about”—the campaign to curtail women’s power by restricting their access to both healthcare and careers of their own. Powerful, secular men—threatened by women’s burgeoning independence—were eager to declare abortion sinful, a position endorsed by newly-minted male MDs who longed to edge out their feminine competition and turn medicine into a standardized, male-only practice. By unraveling the misogynistic and misleading lies that put women’s lives in jeopardy, Wright simultaneously restores Restell to her rightful place in history and obliterates the faulty reasoning underlying the very foundation of what has since been dubbed the “pro-life” movement.

My Thoughts: 

Thanks to my friend who shares The New York Times Book Review sections with me, which is where I first learned about this book. I had never heard of Madame Restell, a woman who rose from poverty to self-made millionaire, a woman who offered a service that polite society both frowned on but also found essential, a woman who frightened men by being unafraid of them and their rules. 

Madame Restell was born Ann Trow in 1811, becoming a maid-of-all-work, a job that instilled in Ann a sympathy for servants that resulted in her treating her own servants far better than the average servants of the age and in a desire to help those servants in trouble. Ann was married at 16 and moved to the United States with her husband and toddler when she was 20. After her husband's death, Ann was forced to find a way to support herself. With so many women skilled at sewing and unwilling to turn to prostitution, young Ann befriended a man who compounded prescriptions. He taught her how to mix medications that would end pregnancies and may also have been the one who taught her to perform surgical abortions. Ann moved on to her own business, helped by her brother and second husband, Charles Lehman. They created the character of Madame Restell. 

No one seemed to find it at all ironic that, while they scorned Madame Restell and the service she provided, they also made her a very rich woman. Riches she was all too happy to flaunt, which may have resulted in the suffragette movement not standing up in the defense of the services she provided. Restell was forced to battle not only the police and public opinion, but also others who provided the same services. She became a master at advertising and using the press to fight her enemies. But she also spent time in both jail and the penitentiary. In 1878, Restell was arrested for the last time by Anthony Comstock, a man who managed to force his own Puritanical views on an entire country. 

This one would be categorized as non-fiction, but it is by no means an unbiased work of non-fiction. To be far to Wright, it's hard not to side against male doctors who refused to adopt hand washing and fought against midwifery until they had all but wiped it out. It's hard not to side with woman being able to get a service they desperately need when they are raped by their employers, when they are impregnated by suiters who abandon them, when they simply cannot conceive of being pregnant for the eighth or ninth time. This in a day and age when "foundlings" weren't allowed in orphanages and were instead sent to almshouses where they were almost certain to die. Wright clearly admires her subject, and the work she did, while acknowledging her flaws. 

In Madame Restell, we not only learn about a forgotten woman, but we also learn a great deal about the times in which she lived - society norms, religion, medicine. As always, I was drawn in by the opportunity to dig deeper into a part of history I didn't know all that much about. Wright provides all the background and research needed without overwhelming readers and shows us that, once again, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Sadly, not much has changed since Madame Restell's time, other than the fact that an abortion, when legal, is a much safer procedure than it was 200 years ago. 

Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe

Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe

Read by Anderson Cooper

8 hours, 18 minutes

Published September 2023 by HarperCollins Publishers

Publisher's Summary: 

The story of the Astors is a quintessentially American story-of ambition, invention, destruction, and reinvention. 

From 1783, when German immigrant John Jacob Astor first arrived in the United States, until 2009, when Brooke Astor's son, Anthony Marshall, was convicted of defrauding his elderly mother, the Astor name occupied a unique place in American society. 

The family fortune, first made by a beaver trapping business that grew into an empire, was then amplified by holdings in Manhattan real estate. Over the ensuing generations, Astors ruled Gilded Age New York society and inserted themselves into political and cultural life, but also suffered the most famous loss on the Titanic, one of many shocking and unexpected twists in the family's story. 

In this unconventional, page-turning historical biography, #1 New York Times bestselling authors Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe chronicle the lives of the Astors and explore what the Astor name has come to mean in America-offering a window onto the making of America itself.

My Thoughts: 

I've been meaning to read Cooper's Vanderbilt for some time. It arrived in my audiobook inbox once, but I still had too long left on the book I was listening to at the time. It arrived in my library as a hold for me recently, but I'd accidentally requested it on CD. One day I'll get to it. In the meantime, I was able to get Cooper's follow up, Astor, which was inspired by the research he'd done into his own family history. 

The Astor family name is one which I've been familiar with for a long time. I knew a little something about the first John Jacob Astor; I'd heard of John Jacob Astor IV, who sank with the Titanic; and the name Brook Astor was familiar to me, having a vague recollection of the battle over her money after she died. But, as you know, I always love a book that teaches me more about a subject I'm only passingly familiar with - especially when that book is well researched and well written. 

John Jacob Astor I, c. 1794
by Gilbert Sullivan

What I learned: 

• John Jacob Astor started his fortune trapping and trading in beaver pelts.  He was not, as you might expect from someone who grew from modest means to immense wealth, not above playing dirty and taking advantage of people. Astor's greatest wealth came from his ability to understand how valuable land around New York City would become; he even bought up land from Aaron Burr. 
• John Jacob Astor I wanted to create his own country, called Astoria, on the west coast. It never came to fruition; but the name Astoria became part of New York history when later family members used it, along with Waldorf (the town where JJA was born), to name hotels and a neighborhood in Queens. 
• Most of John Astor I's fortune passed down to his son William Backhouse Astor. William bought up even more land. On these lands, slum dwellings grew, greatly increasing the Astor fortune. 
• William's son, William Backhouse Jr, married Caroline Astor who became the arbiter of New York society for decades. I'm more familiar with William and Caroline than any other Astor due to having read books about the Vanderbilts, who had to overcome Carline to become accepted in NYC society. Junior was more interested in yachting and other women than in business. They were the parents of John "Jack" Jacob Astor IV. 
• William's grandson, William Waldorf Astor established himself in England but, because of an division between William and his cousin, John Jacob Astor IV, he built the Waldorf Hotel next to John's house in order to dwarf it. Jack Astor convinced his mother to tear down their home and build the Astoria Hotel next to the Waldorf Hotel. Eventually the cousins reached a truce and created corridors between the hotels, creating the Waldorf-Astoria. 
• When Jack's son, William Vincent Astor, inherited his father's wealth, he set out to change the family's image, selling off their slum housing and becaming a great philanthropist (although not necessary a great person). When he died, he left all of his money to the Vincent Astor foundation and his third wife, Brooke. Brooke's son by her first marriage, Anthony, would eventually end up in jail for trying to cheat his mother out of her money in her later years, when she was battling Alzheimer's. Brooke lived to 105 and was the last of Astor to be prominent.  

Again and again throughout the book, Cooper finds ties to people and places in American history, which made the book all that much more interesting. There are several times when Cooper and Howe veer off to explore places or events, which, while interesting, were a distraction from the family history for me. And while Cooper does a fine job reading the book, I can't help but wonder if it would have been easier to keep track of who was who if I'd been physically reading the book (there are, after all, a lot of John Jacobs and William's in the book). Overall, through, I found it fascinating. The history of a family, the history of how a great fortune became so divided and so ill-used as to become inconsequential, the history of so much of the United States. And now I need to get my hands on Vanderbilt so I can see how that family managed to do much the same thing. 

The Mockingbird Next Door: Life With Harper Lee by Marja Mills

The Mockingbird Next Door: Life With Harper Lee by Marja Mills

Read by Amy Lynn Stewart

8 hours 11 minutes

Published July 2014 by The Penguin Press

Publisher's Summary: 

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is one of the best loved novels of the twentieth century. But for the last fifty years, the novel’s celebrated author, Harper Lee, has said almost nothing on the record. Journalists have trekked to her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, where Harper Lee, known to her friends as Nelle, has lived with her sister, Alice, for decades, trying and failing to get an interview with the author. But in 2001, the Lee sisters opened their door to Chicago Tribune journalist Marja Mills. It was the beginning of a long conversation—and a great friendship.

In 2004, with the Lees’ blessing, Mills moved into the house next door to the sisters. She spent the next eighteen months there, sharing coffee at McDonalds and trips to the Laundromat with Nelle, feeding the ducks and going out for catfish supper with the sisters, and exploring all over lower Alabama with the Lees’ inner circle of friends.

Nelle shared her love of history, literature, and the Southern way of life with Mills, as well as her keen sense of how journalism should be practiced. As the sisters decided to let Mills tell their story, Nelle helped make sure she was getting the story—and the South—right. Alice, the keeper of the Lee family history, shared the stories of their family.

The Mockingbird Next Door is the story of Mills’s friendship with the Lee sisters. It is a testament to the great intelligence, sharp wit, and tremendous storytelling power of these two women, especially that of Nelle.

Mills was given a rare opportunity to know Nelle Harper Lee, to be part of the Lees’ life in Alabama, and to hear them reflect on their upbringing, their corner of the Deep South, how To Kill a Mockingbird affected their lives, and why Nelle Harper Lee chose to never write another novel.

My Thoughts: 

I'm more than a little embarrassed to admit that I was sent this book in 2014 for review. I really, really wanted to read it then and was so excited to offered a copy. But I didn't have time when it arrived to read it so it went on the bookshelves where, as you may know, books go to die. I saw a meme today that read: "I haven't read the book, but I own a copy." So me. When I saw that my library had the audiobook, I knew it was time. Lest the publisher think I never even picked up the book that they had so kindly sent me, I made this one a read/listen combination. 

The year after this book was published, Harper Lee's original work, Go Set A Watchman, was published, with much controversy. A year later, Lee died. Three years later, I read Hillary Huber's Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee. Everyone of those events gave me new perspectives about Harper Lee and made reading this book now a completely different experience than it would have been had I read it eight years ago. 

The truth of the matter is that Alice opened her door to Mills; gradually Nelle came around to trust Mills as well. They were instrumental in getting the house next door for Mills when Mills needed to take a break from her reporting work. By this time, Mills was already "in" with the sisters and loved life in Monroeville. As a person with chronic disease, Mills lived a slower life that fit in perfectly with the Lee sisters' inner circle of elderly people. She became an important part of their group and incredibly close to the Lee sisters. 

The Washington Post review said that this book might have become "sycophantic" but didn't. True enough. But it can also hardly be said that Mills was entirely objective. She clearly adored these people and I can't imagine that she would have had it in her to disparage them. She doesn't entirely let Nelle off the hook, which made it all the easier for me to believe the rest of what she wrote about her. Having read those other works, I won't have been able to believe that she was just an eccentric old woman. Although she was that. 

This book makes Nelle Harper Lee human. She was a devoted sister, a woman who was lucky enough to have earned enough money to allow her to live life in a way that brought her pleasure, and, if you were lucky enough to be in her inner circle, someone that would have been fun to know. But she was also a woman who, once To Kill A Mockingbird was popular, could never fully live life entirely on her own terms. 

I'm sorry to the publisher for putting reading this book off for so long. But I'm glad that I read it after I'd read the other two works, which gave me enough background on Lee to make this feel like I was getting a finishing picture of her. The Mockingbird Next Door earned acclaim when it was published and deservedly so. 

Spark: How Genius Ignites, From Child Prodigies to Late Bloomers by Claudia Kalb

Spark: How Genius Ignites, From Child Prodigies to Late Bloomers by Claudia Kalb

Published April 2021 by National Geographic

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through TLC Book Tours, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:

Yo-Yo Ma's ear for music emerged not long after he learned to walk. By the age of seven, he was performing for President Kennedy; by fifteen he debuted at Carnegie Hall. Maya Angelou, by contrast, didn't write her iconic memoir, I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings, until she was 40. What propels some individuals to reach extraordinary creative heights in the earliest years of life while others discover their passions decades later? Are prodigies imbued with innate talent? How often are midlife inspirations triggered by propitious events, like Julia Child's first French meal at the age of 36? Do late bloomers reveal their talents because their skills require life experience and contemplation? 

Through engaging storytelling and intriguing historical and cutting-edge scientific research, best-selling author and acclaimed journalist Claudia Kalb explores these questions to uncover what makes a prodigy and what drives a late bloomer. In this series of linked biographies, Kalb follows the journeys of thirteen remarkable individuals—from Shirley Temple to Alexander Fleming to Eleanor Roosevelt to Bill Gates—to discover the secrets behind their talents. Each possessed a unique arc of inspiration. Each—through science, art, music, theater, and politics—reached extraordinary success at different stages of life. And each offers us a chance to explore the genesis—and experience—of genius.

My Thoughts:

I jumped onto this tour and when the book arrived I thought it looked interesting. Then, when it was suddenly time to read it, I found I didn't want to read it. I have no idea why not. But I figured perhaps I'd bounce around the book, reading a few of the chapters and call it good; I was a little put off when Kalb, in the introduction, suggested that the book should be read straight through. Who was she to tell me what to do? Yeah, I know, I was channeling my teenage self quite a lot there. Here's something you rarely heard me say when I was copping attitude, though. Kalb was right. 

Kalb first introduces readers to people who excelled early in life; then she moved onto those whose talents became clear when they were between 13-27 and finally she moves onto those whom she calls the "late bloomers." That order allows us to see that while many people seem to be born with genius, childhood prodigies don't necessarily show continued excellence in their fields; that for some, a certain amount of learning, encouragement, and an ego that has not yet been crushed result in extraordinary achievements; and for still others, life lessons learned and personal growth are essential to attaining full potential. Perhaps it's not too late, a reader may conclude. 

Of course, I had some subjects I was particularly interesting in reading about: Maya Angelou, Yo-Yo Ma, Eleanor Roosevelt. Others I was tempted to skip over Isaac Newton, Bill Gates, Alexander Fleming. What was Kalb - ancient guy who discovered gravity, guy whose business ethics I question, and guy I thought I'd never heard of. Kalb made them all worth reading about and I learned a lot what made them tick and what made them special. Fleming? Yeah, he's the guy who accidentally discovered penicillin but who could not have discovered it if he had not put in the hard work before that and who could not have discovered it without working in the exact way that he worked. 

Kalb doesn't just talk about each of her subjects but explores the research behind what we call genius and what each person had that helped them to excel where so many other fail. Nature vs. nurture? Both, says Kalb. It's about being born into the right family — not necessarily the rich family but the family who encourages a child's passion and those who live the lives that model that passion (Picasso's father was an artist, Ma's parents were both involved in music). Many of these examples had incredible memories. Many were inherently creative. Some required hardship growing up to develop into the person they became. 

Thanks to the ladies at TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour. For other opinions, check out the full tour here. 

CLAUDIA KALB is an award-winning author and journalist who reports on a wide variety of health and science topics. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Andy Warhol Was a Hoarder: Inside the Minds of History’s Great Personalities. A former senior writer at Newsweek who has also contributed to Smithsonian and Scientific American, Kalb has written cover stories for National Geographic that explore genius through the lens of biography, history, culture, and science. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia. Find out more about Claudia at her website, and follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisin

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisen

Published October 2009 by Henry Holt and Co.

Source: checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:

Louisa May Alcott portrays a writer as worthy of interest in her own right as her most famous character, Jo March, and addresses all aspects of Alcott’s life: the effect of her father’s self-indulgent utopian schemes; her family’s chronic economic difficulties and frequent uprootings; her experience as a nurse in the Civil War; the loss of her health and frequent recourse to opiates in search of relief from migraines, insomnia, and symptomatic pain. Stories and details culled from Alcott’s journals; her equally rich letters to family, friends, publishers, and admiring readers; and the correspondence, journals, and recollections of her family, friends, and famous contemporaries provide the basis for this lively account of the author’s classic rags-to-riches tale. 

Alcott would become the equivalent of a multimillionaire in her lifetime based on the astounding sales of her books, leaving contemporaries like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Henry James in the dust. This biography explores Alcott’s life in the context of her works, all of which are to some extent autobiographical. A fresh, modern take on this remarkable and prolific writer, who secretly authored pulp fiction, harbored radical abolitionist views, and completed heroic service as a Civil War nurse, Louisa May Alcott is in the end also the story of how the all-time beloved American classic Little Women came to be. This revelatory portrait will present the popular author as she was and as she has never been seen before.

My Thoughts:

I'm pretty sure that I've told you before that I received a copy of Alcott's Little Women when I was eight years old. It is one of my treasures and no amount of the truth behind the book will ever change that. When I read Geraldine Brooks' March, the truth about Bronson Alcott began to be clear, as it did in Kelly O'Connor McNees' The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott. Still, I'm sure I was hoping that Alcott's real life hadn't been so very terrible as those ladies portrayed in their fiction. 

The truth was much worse. Bronson Alcott was a terrible selfish, single-minded man who had no real idea how to handle his headstrong second daughter and didn't seem to notice the burden he placed on his wife. Myth of Father March completely busted. What was new here was finding out that my beloved Marmee (Alcott's portrayal of her mother in Little Women) was not the saint she was made out to be, either. She followed her husband from place to place as he pursued his vision, despite the hardship to herself and her children and seems to have felt as if it were her family's and their friends' duties to support the family when times were hard (which was pretty much always). 

On the other hand, who might Louisa May Alcott have been if she had not been introduced to Ralph Also Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathanial Hawthorne, and a host of well-known abolitionists? In that regard, her father served her well in drawing the family into those circles. 

I couldn't help but wonder what Louisa might have become if writing weren't the only way she could reliably make money, money that her family desperately needed. And what might she have written if she had not felt obliged to write so much of what she wrote simply because she knew that kind of story would make money. Still, Alcott turned out a mountain of writing in her lifetime, in a lot of different genres, including poetry. Reisen certainly has me wanting to scout out more of Alcott's writing than simply the works for young people which I'm so familiar with. 

Reisin was able to obtain some interviews never before published which add a lot of new information to Lousia's adult life. It wasn't an easy life, despite eventually becoming well off, able to support her family and be very generous with others. Alcott became sick nursing soldiers during the Civil War and never completely recovered; in fact, Reisen theorizes (as did Alcott) that Louisa eventually died of mercury poisoning from the calomel given to her in the hospital to treat typhoid pneumonia. She used morphine, opium, and hashish to ease her chronic pain; never married; lost two of her younger sisters; and became of the caretake of her mother and, to some extent, her father. Top all of that off with the fact that she didn't much enjoy her popularity; Reisen even called her "curmudgeonly." 

Louisa May Alcott lived an incredibly interesting life but one that, sadly, lacked the happily-ever-afters found in her most popular books. If you're a fan of Alcott's, I definitely recommend this book, as well as the documentary of the same name. 

The Patriots: Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the Making of America

The Patriots: Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the Making of America by Winston Groom
Published November 2020 by National Geographic
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through TLC Book Tours, in exchange for an honest review

Publishers Summary:
In this masterful narrative, Winston Groom brings his signature storytelling panache to the tale of our nation’s most fascinating founding fathers–Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams–painting a vivid picture of the improbable events, bold ideas, and extraordinary characters who created the United States of America. 

When the Revolutionary War ended in victory, there remained a stupendous problem: establishing a workable democratic government in the vast, newly independent country. Three key founding fathers played significant roles: John Adams, the brilliant, dour New Englander; Thomas Jefferson, the aristocratic Southern renaissance man; and Alexander Hamilton, an immigrant from the Caribbean island of Nevis. In this riveting narrative, best-selling author Winston Groom illuminates these men as the patriots fundamentally responsible for the ideas that shaped the emerging United States. Their lives could not have been more different, and their relationships with each other were often rife with animosity. And yet they led the charge–two of them creating and signing the Declaration of Independence, and the third establishing a national treasury and the earliest delineation of a Republican party. The time in which they lived was fraught with danger, and their achievements were strained by vast antagonisms that recall the intense political polarization of today. But through it all, they managed to shoulder the heavy mantle of creating the United States of America, putting aside their differences to make a great country. Drawing on extensive correspondence, Groom shares the remarkable story of the beginnings of our great nation.

My Thoughts:

I've long had an interest in the Revolutionary War and those involved in it and the founding of this country. I did, after all, grow up with an American History teacher for a father, a man who took us to many of the significant sites of the early United States. Over the years I've done some of my own reading as well. But recently we've come to find out that what we learned growing up isn't all there is to story of the founding of this country. And then there was Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton, which amped up everyone's interest in this period of our history and the players involved, including mine. 

Groom gives on overview of each of his subjects' lives in the opening chapters, which especially makes this a good book for those just beginning to delve deeper into this part of our history. He doesn't dive too deeply into each man's early years but begins to flesh out their lives when them become involved in the Revolution and, more importantly, in their roles in developing this country into what it has become. There's not, I suspect, a lot of new information here for those who have really studied these men or this time period. Still, Groom's novel writing skills show through in making this an immensely readable book and there was certainly plenty of new information for people like me, who aren't scholars of the subject matter. Most interesting to me was reading about the relationship between these men, a subject that Miranda's musical really made me want to learn more about. It's not a bad thing to realize that politics have always been messy in our country, with personalities that influence decisions.

I sort of feel like a kid when I pick up an history book and get excited to find pictures but I always feel like they are helpful to visualize the players in a book and the places they lived and worked. This book has an especially good full-color section which I flipped to as I read, even though many of the portraits were familiar to me. 

My husband wanted to be the person in this house who read this book for review. I'm glad I prevailed and got the first shot at it. I enjoyed it a lot. I suppose I'll have to let him read it before I pass it on to my dad, but I'm really looking forward to getting his thoughts on this one.

Thanks to the ladies of TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour. For other opinions about this book, check out the full tour here. 

About Winston Groom:

WINSTON GROOM was born in Washington, D.C., but grew up in Mobile, Alabama, on the Gulf Coast. After a brief period in the Army, Groom returned to Washington, where he worked as a reporter at the Washington Star, covering the political and court beat. He enjoyed a stint in New York City, befriending and socializing with literary legends before returning to Alabama, where he settled down to writing and enjoying life. He is the author of 18 previous books, including Forrest Gump and The Aviators. Sadly, Mr. Groom died in September this year. 

Manderley Forever: A Biography of Daphne du Maurier by Tatiana de Rosnay

Manderley Forever: A Biography of Daphne du Maurier by Tatiana De Rosnay

Published April 2017 by St. Martin's Press

Source: checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:

As a bilingual bestselling novelist with a mixed Franco-British bloodline and a host of eminent forebears, Tatiana de Rosnay is the perfect candidate to write a biography of Daphne du Maurier. As an eleven-year-old de Rosnay read and reread Rebecca, becoming a lifelong devotee of Du Maurier’s fiction. 

Now de Rosnay pays homage to the writer who influenced her so deeply, following Du Maurier from a shy seven-year-old, a rebellious sixteen-year-old, a twenty-something newlywed, and finally a cantankerous old lady. With a rhythm and intimacy to its prose characteristic of all de Rosnay’s works, Manderley Forever is a vividly compelling portrait and celebration of an intriguing, hugely popular and (at the time) critically underrated writer.

My Thoughts:

I love Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca; it's one of the few books I've reread. But, strangely, I've never read any of her other books, despite having a couple of them on my bookshelves. In fact, I had no idea how prolific du Maurier had been nor how versatile she had been, writing everything from her own autobiography and biographies to shocking short stories (she penned The Birds, on which the Alfred Hitchcock movie is based) and novels of all sorts. Rebecca is, of course, her most famous, the book that made her an international sensation. But it was also the book that she grew to regret writing. Her notoriety impinged on her wish for privacy and set a standard she was never able to reach again, despite having great success. 

If you've been here long, you'll have notice that when I reference Kirkus Reviews, it's generally because they tend to be so harsh on books and I rarely agree with them. This book is the except. To my opinion for their review, not their opinion of the book. I can't speak to how well researched this book is - certainly De Rosnay has amassed a lot of information about du Maurier and her life and I did learn a tremendous amount. But according to Kirkus Reviews, she hasn't broken any new ground, just reframed the information that was already available. De Rosnay writes the book in present tense, in an effort, she says, to make the book feel more intimate. But for me (and Kirkus Reviews), it didn't work. I found it really disconcerting. It also felt like De Rosnay wanted to cram in every detail she found about Du Maurier, often inserting details or paragraphs that added nothing to the topic at hand. For example, in Du Maurier's early life, she devotedly wrote in her journal and much of the early part of the book felt very much like De Rosnay was taking pieces straight from the journals rather than giving readers a full picture. 

Du Maurier did live a fascinating live and was surrounded by so many well-known people. The brothers Llewlyn Davies, the inspiration for J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, were her cousins and Barrie, himself, was an intimate of the family through both the theater (Du Maurier's father was a famous actor) and his role as guardian of the Llewelyn Davies brothers after their parents' deaths. Du Maurier's husband worked directly with both Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth and both visited Du Maurier's home. Du Maurier traveled extensively, most often to her beloved France which called to her because of her connection with the country through her ancestors. De Rosnay does best when she is describing Du Maurier's trips to France; other destinations are little more than a postcard home. And we are reminded, again and again, that Du Maurier preferred wearing slacks and a cardigan to dresses. Perhaps that was done as a reminder (although there were plenty of other, better, reminders) of the boy that Du Maurier felt lived inside her. 

To her credit, De Rosnay doesn't shy aware from showing Du Maurier's warts, including Du Maurier's failure as a mother to her daughters for much of their formative years and her selfishness in refusing to live with her husband most of their marriage as his career kept him away from the places she wanted to be.  Du Maurier was certainly a woman of passions. When she wrote, her passion for writing took precedence over all else and when she loved, she could think of little else. In the end, she died as much from an inability to find the muse any longer as she did from age or the depression that plagued her family. 

To be fair to the book, Kirkus Reviews and I seem to be in the minority; there are plenty of positive reviews for this book. Du Maurier's daughter, in fact, seems to feel De Rosnay has captured her mother. So take my thoughts for what their worth and, if you're interested in this one, look at other reviews before you write this one off. 

Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep

Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep
Read by Hillary Huber
Published May 2019 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Source: audiobook checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:
Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell’s murderer was acquitted—thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend.

Sitting in the audience during the vigilante’s trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood, the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research seventeen years earlier. Lee spent a year in town reporting, and many more years working on her own version of the case.

Now Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South. At the same time, she offers a deeply moving portrait of one of the country’s most beloved writers and her struggle with fame, success, and the mystery of artistic creativity.


My Thoughts:
In the prologue to Furious Hours we see Nelle (Nell, not Nellie, a mistake so many people made that she decided to use her middle name only on her book) Harper Lee sitting in the gallery, watching the trial of Robert Burns, accused of killing the Reverend Willie Maxwell. And then we don't see her again until the final third of the book. To be honest, I felt a little gypped by this. I was expecting her story to be tied in throughout the book. When Cep finally got back to Lee, though, it was well worth the wait.

There are three parts to this book. First is the story of the Reverend Maxwell, a man who took out literally hundreds of life insurance policies on family members, some of whom didn't even know he'd done it. After two of his wives died, a nephew, and a step daughter, most of his family lived in fear of him. Almost every one believed he was guilty of these murders but the law couldn't seem to find him guilty, thanks in no small part to his lawyer, Tom Radney.

When Radney flips and defends Maxwell's killer, the book moves into the crime story that Harper Lee hoped to make into her In Cold Blood. This part of the book is Radney's and he's every bit as much a character as was Maxwell. Lee worked closely with Radney and he even gave her a giant folio of material for a book about Maxwell and his murder.

But...as we all know, Lee never wrote that book. In the final section of this book, Cep returns to Lee. It's the first time I've ever really felt like I knew Lee and the first time I ever felt like I really understood why she never published another book. It certainly wasn't because she didn't want to write. But by the time she was ready to write the book about Maxwell, most of the people who had supported her when she wrote To Kill A Mockingbird were gone and she appears to have been lost as to how to put the material together.

Any one of the sections of this book could stand on its own and Cep includes a lot of interesting back story (including the origins of life insurance and a background of voodoo) that really add to the book. I definitely recommend this book and the audiobook is especially good. Just know, going in, that this book is not exclusively Lee's story. If you know that, you won't be disappointed.

Secret Lives of the First Ladies

Secret Lives of the First Ladies: What Your Teachers Never Told You About The Women Of The White House by Cormac O'Brien
Published 2005 by Quirk Books
Source: loaned to me by my mom

Publisher's Summary:
Secrets Lives of the First Ladies features outrageous and uncensored profiles of all the presidents' wives.

You'll discover that Dolley Madison loved to chew tobacco. Mary Todd Lincoln was committed to an asylum, and Mamie Eisenhower never missed an episode of As the World Turns. You'll also learn why Hillary Clinton went to work for Wal-Mart (long before she started campaigning for a higher minimum wage).

Complete with biographies of every first lady, Secret Lives of the First Ladies tackles rough questions that other history books are afraid to ask: How many of these women owned slaves? Which ones were cheating on their husbands? And why did Eleanor Roosevelt serve hot dogs to the Kings and Queens of England? American history was never this much fun!

My Thoughts:
I have had this book on my shelves for a long time. Laura Bush is the last first lady included; updated versions have since been released. And then you may have noticed that it sat on my nightstand for months and months. It made an excellent nightstand book - none of the first lady's stories is more than a few pages long, perfect for reading a few minutes before you end your day. In fact, it would make a great guest room night stand choice for that same reason. O'Brien, to my way of thinking, shows very little political bias. Likewise, he pulls no punches. Of Letitia Tyler's (wife of our 7th president, John Tyler), insistence that her female slaves not work in the field but instead in the home, O'Brien says: "We can only assume that such splendid generosity downgraded their roiling hatred to simmering resentment."

Each of the chapters includes a "data" box - date of birth and death, marriage date, husband, children, years she was first lady, religion, a sound bite, and, curiously, astrological sign. O'Brien devotes a few paragraphs to each woman's early years and background, including how their courtship with their future husbands. He includes a good amount of detail about their lives as the wives of politicians and their impact as first ladies, the impression they made on those around them at the time, and their impact on their husbands. At the end of each chapter, O'Brien has included a few details about each woman that are of particular interest. Not surprisingly, the chapters on the more recent first ladies are longer, what with more information to be found on them. But, there is a surprisingly lot to be learned about the early first ladies as well.

How many of these things did you already know:

• Helen "Nellie" Taft was responsible for the planting of the cherry trees in Potomac Park in Washington, which draws 1.5 million people to the city annually when they are in bloom.
• Julia Tyler (John Tyler's second wife) first got the Marine band to play "Hail To The Chief" upon the president's arrival at social events. 
• Bess Truman (wife of Harry Truman) fought to save the White House. Congress wanted to raze it and start over but Truman saved it and oversaw extensive renovations. 
• Several of the first wives believed they were psychic and more than one of them held seances.
• Caroline "Carrie" Harrison (wife of Benjamin Harrison) crocheted some 3,500 pairs of slippers which she donated to charity. They were color-coded to reflect their intended recipients - blue for those who had sided with the North and grey for those who had sided with the South during the Civil War.
• Pat Nixon's (wife of Richard Nixon) real name was Thelma. Her father always called her "Pat" because she was born the day before St. Patrick's Day; only after his death did she begin calling herself Pat, and then Patricia.

While these are not, of course, full autobiographies of each lady, each of the provides a good overview of each of these women with the kinds of detail included that make readers see the real person. I definitely enjoyed this book, even if it did take me months to read it!

Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik

Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik
Published: October 2015 by HarperCollins Publishers
Source: bought for my Nook

Publisher's Summary:
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg never asked for fame—she has only tried to make the world a little better and a little freer.

But nearly a half-century into her career, something funny happened to the octogenarian: she won the internet. Across America, people who weren’t even born when Ginsburg first made her name as a feminist pioneer are tattooing themselves with her face, setting her famously searing dissents to music, and making viral videos in tribute.

Notorious RBG, inspired by the Tumblr that amused the Justice herself and brought to you by its founder and an award-winning feminist journalist, is more than just a love letter. It draws on intimate access to Ginsburg's family members, close friends, colleagues, and clerks, as well an interview with the Justice herself. An original hybrid of reported narrative, annotated dissents, rare archival photos and documents, and illustrations, the book tells a never-before-told story of an unusual and transformative woman who transcends generational divides. As the country struggles with the unfinished business of gender equality and civil rights, Ginsburg stands as a testament to how far we can come with a little chutzpah.

My Thoughts:
I have been wanting to read this book since before it was published, something like two years now. I may actually have developed the entire theme of my bookclub for the year as an excuse to make sure I found time for it (Family, Friendship, and Feminism).

This book grew out of the Tumbr account, NotoriousRBG; it grew out of...oh here, I'll let them tell you:

'This Tumblr began in tribute to Justice Ginsburg’s fierce dissent in a voting rights case, in which she acknowledged the long history, and continuing reality, of racial discrimination in this country. As she has said in another dissent, “The stain of generations of racial oppression is still visible in our society and the determination to hasten its removal remains vital.”"

I've been aware of Ruth Bader Ginsburg only about as long as most other people my age, that is to say since she was named as a Supreme Court Justice. Which is also to say that I must have been living with my head under a rock. Much of what makes Bader Ginsburg so beloved now, in addition to her fierce dissents to majority opinions of the Court, is her tiny stature and her, shall we say, advanced age. But those in the know have long known that this woman has been fighting hard for the rights of women (and, she would be quick to point out, for all people) for a very, very long time. Really, most of her life, first as a student fighting to get into law school, then to get every job she's ever had, and then on nearly every job she's ever had.


As for the book itself, the opening chapter, "Notorious," threw me a bit. I felt like we were beginning at the ending and I couldn't quite figure out where it went from there. And it did bug me quite a lot that the authors referred to Bader Ginsburg throughout the entire book as "RBG." Only RBG, never by Ruth or Bader Ginsburg or whatever nicknames for her her friends may use.

But the authors have clearly spent a great deal of time with the Justice, herself, as well as with her family members and those who know her best. Readers come away from the book feeling very much as if they know the woman who was known in her youth as Kiki. We learn about the great influences of her life, the great love of her life, the great achievements of her life. We also learn that Bader Ginsburg is a terrible cook, is as passionate about working out daily as she is about opera, and counted Antonin Scalia as a close friend. It's  clear from her body of work that Bader Ginsburg is also passionate equality of all people and incredibly devoted to her work.

Unbiased the book is not. But I think the title alone is fair warning that the authors are fans. RBG's legion of fans are surely more than happy with the book. I already knew RBG was a woman to be admired and a feminist icon. Now I'm certain that the woman is a national treasure.

Kate McKinnon is clearly another great fan!

Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit Of Their Runaway Slave Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar

Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar
Published February 2017 by Atria
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:
When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s capital, after a brief stay in New York. In setting up his household he took Tobias Lear, his celebrated secretary, and nine slaves, including Ona Judge, about which little has been written. As he grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn’t get his arms around: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Rather than comply, Washington decided to circumvent the law. Every six months he sent the slaves back down south just as the clock was about to expire.

Though Ona Judge lived a life of relative comfort, the few pleasantries she was afforded were nothing compared to freedom, a glimpse of which she encountered first-hand in Philadelphia. So, when the opportunity presented itself one clear and pleasant spring day in Philadelphia, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New England. Yet freedom would not come without its costs.

At just twenty-two-years-old, Ona became the subject of an intense manhunt led by George Washington, who used his political and personal contacts to recapture his property.

My Thoughts:

What I Didn't Like: 
Never Caught, sadly, suffers from coming in my reading directly on the heels of Victoria: The Queen, a subject of which there is so much information it took 600 pages to include it all. Of course, much less is known about the life of a slave in 18th-century America; it stands to reason that the book would be much shorter but it also stands to reason that much would have to be inferred about Judge, rather than based on known facts about her.

Throughout the book, Dunbar tended to use phrases like "we can assume that" or "she would probably have." It's a small thing but, for me, the book would have been stronger if Dunbar had simply given us the facts that led her to those conclusions then let readers draw their own inferences or simply said something like "this being the case, it's possible that" or "given those circumstances, this might be why..."

What I Liked:
I learned a tremendous amount about George and Martha Washington when I read Ron Chernow's Washington so I was not under any illusions that the Washingtons were progressives when it came to matters of slavery. But, let's face it, the majority of  people are not delving into that 900 page behemoth; a bite-sized lesson like Never Caught is far more likely to be the way they will find out that although Washington treated his slaves better than many slaveholders, they were still his property and he was acutely aware of their value and his reliance on them.

When Ona Judge dared to leave them, they knew they ran the risk that if they did not capture her, their other property might get ideas into their heads as well, something they couldn't tolerate. Furthermore, they were the most famous couple in this new country and their reputation was at stake, both in the eyes of other slaveholders and in those of the people already fighting against slavery. Once Judge made her escape, Dunbar had much more information to base the book on, the ads the agents for the Washingtons posted, the letters Martha wrote, and Judge's own story which she told to a couple of reporters late in her life.

I had not been aware of how many people were already opposed to slavery eighty years before it was finally abolished, particularly in the city of Philadelphia. It would have been difficult for slaves to make the acquaintance of free blacks, but it was not impossible. The free blacks had a good system in place for assisting runaways and, although it was still not easy and extremely dangerous for all involved, many slaves made their way to freedom this way.

That guy we grew up believing was so honest he could not tell a lie? Yeah, he wasn't above using illegal methods to try to bring Judge back to Virginia. Fortunately for her, her own quick wits and some luck in the people that were hired to help Washington, Judge managed to elude her would-be captors. Even so, life for a free black was extremely difficult. This might go without saying; still, I learned a lot about the lengths they had to go to just to stay alive.


In the end, despite the terrible poverty she suffered most of her life after her escape, Judge still felt it was preferable to having remained a slave. That's a statement about slavery that's hard to ignore.

Victoria: The Queen by Julia Baird

Victoria: The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire by Julia Baird
Published November 2016 by Random House Publishing Group
Source: my ecopy courtesy of the publisher through Netgalley

Publisher's Summary:
Drawing on previously unpublished papers, Victoria: The Queen is a new portrait of the real woman behind the myth—a story of love and heartbreak, of devotion and grief, of strength and resilience.


My Thoughts:

Coronation

More than 600 pages. More than 80 years of life. More than 60 years on the throne. Some of the best known names in world history. Some of the greatest changes in world history. One of the great love stories. One woman we think we understand. After all, we've read our history books. We've watched the movies.

I didn't know the half of it. Baird schooled me not just on Victoria's life, but on the lives of her family, her place in the world, and world politics in her life time. I tend to learn history one place or one person at at time, often losing track of where that person or place fit into the greater world. Baird does an excellent job of grounding readers on world events throughout Victoria's life, without getting too mired down in them and losing track of her subject.

Suffice to say that Victoria lived in a time of massive changes in the world: the overthrow of monarchies, the surge of the industrial revolution, and the dawn of the suffragette movement. She reigned through wars, saw her family married into the monarchies of other powers, and her life intermingled with most of the most famous people of her time.

The book is slow going; those pages are tiny print packed with information. Baird had unprecedented access to diaries, letters and papers which allowed her to paint an incredible full and nuanced portrait of a queen who was so much more complex than most of us realize.

We so often think of Victoria in one of two ways - the deeply devoted wife that spent the rest of her life in mourning after the death of her husband or as a cranky looking, fat old woman. She was, in fact, both of those things. But she was also a a feisty queen who was prone to give her prime ministers hell, a woman who loved to laugh, a ruler who reveled in her country's strength but preferred peace to war, a woman whose beloved husband may not have been the greatest love of her life, a woman who was so desperate for someone to care for her that she allowed herself to be hoodwinked, and a person who often doubted her own knowledge.

With John Brown, who may have been
Victoria's great love (left) and Munshi Abdul
Karim, (who abused Victoria's trust (right).

I'd always thought of Victoria as something of an super hero for women. But it turns out she wasn't entirely the paragon of feminism I'd imagined. Partly because the queen just didn't have as much power as I'd thought. Then there was the relationship she had with Prince Albert. She called him "my Lord and Master!" I mean, I know it was kind of the thing to do in those days but she was the queen! Also, she was strongly opposed to the suffragette movement and reveled in the love her country showered on her for being the mother figurehead.

You may recall that I don't keep very many books once I've read them. This one is a keeper because of the wealth of historical information it contains. Unfortunately, my copy is an egalley, which will be unreadable in a few more days. I may just have to buy myself a copy.

The Man In The Rockefeller Suit: The Amazing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Impostor by Mark Seal

The Man In The Rockefeller Suit: The Amazing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Impostor by Mark Seal
336 pages
Published June 2011 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher

In 1978 a seventeen-year-old young man arrived in the United States from Germany, imposing on the kindness of a family he only just barely met. Though Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter arrived in Connecticut under his real name, already very little else about his life was real.

"Christian was too big for Bergen, all of the men seemed to be saying, and creating another persona was the only way he would ever leave the little town that nobody ever leaves."

Over the next several decades, Gerhartsreiter refined his act and charmed his way into society circles even as his arrogance grew.  While in Connecticut, he was such a rude house guest that he was kicked out of three homes. By the time he arrived in California (yet again imposing on people he had only briefly met in Germany), "he had clearly learned how to flatter and acquiesce, when to speak and when to remain silent, and how to work the American system." By then Gerhartsreiter had become Christopher Chichester, relative to Lord Mountbatten.

Leaving California, Chichester headed back to the East Coast, emerging on Wall Street as Christopher Crowe, executive while continuing to maintain that he has aristocratic ties. After repeatedly being exposed as a fraud in his jobs, and when law enforcement began asking questions about California, Crowe disappeared. Years passed before he again reemerged, this time as Clark Rockefeller, his greatest character yet.

"To his friends and acquaintances, Clark Rockefeller was a prince. He was so friendly, so attentive, so eager to please. He cared about people and seemed genuinely interested in them"

In the summer of 2008, Clark's perfect world came to an abrupt end. After a divorce, and the loss of his gravy train, Clark determined to get his revenge by kidnapping the couple's daughter bringing the FBI down on him. Gradually the world began to learn the truth about Clark Rockefeller. All of this is public records.

By the time Rockefeller was brought to trial, Mark Sea had been investigating him for almost a year but as the trial progressed, Seal discovered that he, too had been conned by Rockefeller. Wanting to finally learn the full story, Seal traveled to Germany then back and forth across the U.S. talking to everyone he could find who might be able to offer a glimpse into the man who would become Clark Rockefeller. The result was first an article in Vanity Fair magazine and then this book.

Seal may not have offered any new glimpses in the mind of a con artist (he doesn't cover the psychological aspect at all) and after nearly 400 pages there is no reason "why." I didn't need one; I've long ago learned that there is not always an easy answer.

What I did learn is that rich people are amazingly gullible and that if you act like you're better than some people, it will make them all the more anxious to be in your circle. Almost all of the people that Seal interviewed recounted some type of unusual behavior on Rockefeller's part. Apparently, if you're rich enough (or people think you are), people will write off these kinds of things as eccentricities.

Just for you, Mari, I took off my rose-colored glasses while I read this one; I'm perfectly willing to accept that there are people like Rockefeller out there in the world. It turns out that reading about one of them makes for highly entertaining reading. One reviewer called the book "cinematic;" NPR recently suggested that readers pick up this book before it's made into a movie. Sam Rockwell, I think this one has your name on it.

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
Published October 2010 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

Usually I start a book review with a synopsis, but it hardly seems necessary in the case of this book.  It's a biography so it almost goes without saying that the book begins at approximately the time of George Washington's birth and ends at approximately the time of Washington's death (although Chernow does explore Washington's legacy after his death briefly).  The highlights of what happened in between those two events are largely known as well: Washington married the widow Martha Custis, he served as the Commander-in-chief of the Continental Army and was the first president of the newly formed union.

But this book is 817 pages long so you know there is much more here than the basic details of Washington's life.  Chernow has drawn extensively from Washington's own papers and correspondence, as well as other biographies and the writings of other important players of the time, to craft an incredibly detailed look into Washington's life, thoughts, and motives.  It's my custom to take notes as I read, but inside of 200 pages I realized that I would never get through this book if I continued to do that--there is just too much information that was new to me in this book.  In fact, all of that information made it almost impossible to get through the book; I could only realistically absorb 15-20 pages at a sitting.

George Washington was not raised as a pampered child.  In fact, his mother, Mary, drilled habits of thrift and industry into young George, particularly after his father died.  She was a hard woman and Chernow says that there was always a "cool, quiet antagonism between Washington and his mother."  Chernow believes that Martha's treatment of young George created a man who was "overly sensitive to criticism and suffered from a lifelong need for approval" and that "George became an overly controlled personality and learned to master his temper and curb his tongue."

It was interesting to me to watch Washington, who liked his aristocratic airs and fine things, went from being a wealthy planter, interested primarily in accruing wealth and deeply attached to the British way of life, become a leader in a revolution.  His disillusion with with colonial rule began with his military service.  Because he lived in the colonies, he was never able to become a regular with the British army which rankled him.  He became further frustrated by his reliance on British brokers to purchase goods on his behalf and to sell his own.crops.  He became convinced that he was inferior goods were purchased for him and that he was not getting full price on his crops.  But much of this reliance on British brokers was the planters own fault; they relied heavily on the brokers for credit and Washington was no exception, frequently running up enormous debts while continuing to order extravagant goods.  Reading this was like reading about current events--clearly we didn't learn a lesson regarding credit from our forefathers  Curiously, the very war that had brought Washington so much fame (the French and Indian War) and also resulted in massive debt for the British, a burden the leaders decided to shift to their North American subjects which would eventually result in the "historic anomaly of a revolution inaugurated by affluent, conservative leaders."

Washington's dealings with his slaves and his feelings about slavery were also interesting.  On the one hand, he was a better than most slaveholder--he trained a lot of his slaves for trades, allowed them to fish, have gardens and keep their families together.  On the other hand, many of them lived under horrific conditions, he was strongly opposed to allowing blacks into the army during the revolution and he didn't free his own slaves until after Martha's death.  Washington, an exceedingly hard worker, grew frustrated with his slaves because he couldn't get them to work as hard as he thought they should.  The fact that there was no incentive for them to work harder during the long hours that they were working seemed to escape him.

The view I had of Washington being a great soldier was certainly altered by this book.  His first ever foray as the leader of a group of soldiers resulted in a massacre and, to be honest, a great many of his Revolutionary War decisions were even worse decisions.  And yet, Washington frequently made brilliant decisions and made excellent use of the spy network he developed.  He was also fearless in battle--never a leader to sit at the back of the battle and observe, Washington always rode straight into the fray, something that his soldiers found inspiring.  As a leader, Washington was often criticized during the war by his own officers and aides, members of Congress and the general populace.  To be fair, Washington was sometimes indecisive but he was also hampered throughout the war with undisciplined troops and a Congress that was unwilling to give Washington the necessary support.

 Fortunately for Washington, he was an even better politician than he was soldier.  He was masterful at getting what he wanted, often without even appearing to have worked to effect change, and he was not above stooping to less than scrupulous means to come out on top.  In that way, politics of the time were not much different that they are today.  When we think back on the founding fathers, we generally think of them as being of a like mind, which the single goal of creating this country.  But there were just as many differences of opinion, just as much backstabbing and just as much in-fighting 250 years ago as there is now.  Thomas Jefferson, for example, was not at all a fan of Washington's and even stayed away from Washington's memorial service after his death. 


I'm not one to keep a lot of the books that I have read - the classics, the books I truly loved, and the books I feel I'll refer back to in the future being the exception.  This is one of those.  I can't wait to pass it along to my dad and get his opinions.  Having been an American History teacher for 38 years, he may not have as much to learn from this one but I'm sure he'll enjoy it.  And now that I've read this one, I'm eager to pick up other biographies by Chernow.  Thanks TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour!

Dead End Gene Pool by Wendy Burden

Dead End Gene Pool by Wendy Burden
288 pages
Published April 2010 by Penguin Group
Source: the publisher for the Spring Reading Series at Books On The Brain

Wendy Burden is the great- great- great- granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt. The Vanderbilt family was one of the wealthiest family in America for generations but by the time Wendy was born the fortunes of the various family branches were starting to dwindle and the gene pool was definitely getting shallow. Wendy's father was the Vanderbilt and when he committed suicide, his parents cut Wendy's mother off financially. She still managed to find enough money to keep herself in vacations, fancy clothes, and booze but she had almost no interest in parenting her three children. Wendy's grandparents insisted on having the children visit often and they certainly spoiled the children. But they weren't much better at paying attention to them. In fact Wendy says she felt much more as if the servants were her family.

What makes this book different from the other tales of poor little rich kids you've read? Burden's biting sense of humor and tough chick attitude. When she was young, she fancied herself to be Wednesday Addams, had an obsession with the macabre, and was something of a hellion. She frequently thought of ways to kill her brother (in the duck press for example); once, along with her brother took every bit of food out of the kitchen of one of her grandparents' homes to teach her grandfather and the chef a lesson; and, one summer, kept a collection of dead birds in various stages of decomposition.

Burden takes shots at everyone in her family and on the staff, but seems to take particular pleasure in going after her mother (who, frankly, seems to deserve everything she gets) who spends most of Burden's childhood telling her how fat she is and all of her own adult life in a drunken stupor.

I laughed out loud frequently and read bits of the book often to my husband (apparently it helps if you are actually reading the book to find it funny). I started to wonder if I might be a mean person to think it was so funny to make fun of a family that is so clearly screwed up. Seriously, if my kids made fun of people in the same way, I would scold them.

As the book progressed, the suicidal tendencies and the effects of the family's alcoholism started to take their toll and the humor did start to seem mean to me. It was a little painful to watch Burden grow up without any real emotional attachment to anyone in her family. The pacing of the book felt a bit uneven to me, slowing as the book went on, and the stories lost much of their bite.

Do not go into the book expecting to learn about the history of the Vanderbilt family; other than the initial run down of how the family descended down to Wendy, there is very little here to connect Burden to the Vanderbilt name.