Customer Reviews

Ladies and Not-So-Gentle Women: Elisabeth Marbury, Anne Morgan, Elsie de Wolfe, Anne Vanderbilt, and Their Times

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you love a good victorian novel or a fine James or Wharton work, you will love Lewis' book. He is a superior writer who has brought together an incredible amount of penetrating and enjoyable material about four amazing REAL women. The word that suits this book is ABUNDANCE. I ate it up. There are side stories, and gossipy inserts, historical facts and little known incidents brought to life. I loved it and brought the big babe to bed for many nights reading. What makes a book is the writer and if you add a good writer to great subjects and then times that by 4(!) you have Lewis. Don't let them slam you in the stacks babe -- you rock!

As a voracious reader of everything, but especially social history and even more of olde new york, I was so excited to discover this book. But, it is hard to plow through the verbiage, repetition, and confusion of this book. Each of these woman could have been the subject of her own book and Lewis has done little in the first three quarters to give us anything so we may understand connections that merit their lives being twined together in this fashion. Also, Lewis has tried hard to develop mystery and suspense where there doesn't need to be any - these ladies are great just the way they are, the endless foreshadowing, broad hinting and leaving a story just when it gets interesting is rather silly. The author has obviously done detailed research, but I found it confusing enough to have to jump back and forth between the narratives about the four subjects, but threw up my hands as chapter after chapter began with three pages on someone new who turned out to be the sister or next door neighbor of one of the subjects. Whew, I finally deconstructed the thing by reading each woman's story through by picking it out of the morass. What a shame, because these are interesting women.

Each of these women could easily have had their own biography, but the author does a pretty good job of covering all four, their relationships with their world and each other. This book is a bit disorganized, but once you sort out the characters, this is a wonderful view of four outstanding women and their world.

I found this book by accident. The woman in the lower right corner is my great grandmother; Anne Harriman Vanderbilt. I bought it as a surprise for my mother but the whole family is delighted to learn things about items we still own and history that is cherished. Thank you to the author for this find. It is a wonderful book.

Thank you Alfred Allan Lewis for creating a book of these spirited women who were the backbone of New York City, American society and worldwide. They are invisible in our history books, but thanks to you and your accuracy for facts their spirit remains alive!

These women influenced their power, money, political and social status to unite and heal mankind. I should know, I was there........to carry on, and say every "Queen" to there own home..