Brilliant, very engaging

An amazing book very informative but entertaining at the same time. Very well read. Highly recommend

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1 person found this helpful

Too disjointed

Despite a wonderful narrator too disjointed and in need of good editing to deserve more than three stars

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Erratic but useful & intereting social history

I have recently read a good deal of the social history of the American and English upper classes of this period (inc’ Anderson Coopers ‘The Vanderbilts’ and the unexpurgated diaries of Henry ‘Chips’ Channon) and there are some new and insightful observations in this book. Most interestingly the distinctions between the lives of very wealthy women in America vs those of titles women in the UK, at that time. It transpires that New York society, even that which considers itself ‘old money’ etc, in its attempts to ape European nobility, created a more rigid and hidebound structure that to an Englishman belies a very ‘middle class’ approach.
European nobility meanwhile seems to have been ruthless in its attempts to acquire American fortunes and use them to prop up a way of life and a class which might have seemed to anyone else to have been in its death throes.
It’s a book about people none of whom are especially inter sting or edifying. American women with to much money and not enough to do, vs European men with not enough money and too many obligations.
There were some very starve pronunciation choices (I’m pretty sure Mamie Fish pronounced her forename to rhyme with Amy, rather than Mammy for example! And some strange pauses and punctuation. But the reader has a clear and good speaking voice.
The book hovers between biography and social history a little precariously and this makes it sometimes seem a bit erratic, but it brings clear evidence to support some of its oblique assertions.

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Interesting and revealing history

This is a retelling of many personal journeys to marriage and back of American heiresses marrying into the British aristocracy. Plenty of insight into how this affected both families and society, even political decisions on both sides of the Atlantic. I loved the contrast of ‘old money’ and ‘new money’ within American society. My only complaint is that through thread narrative seems to stop and start. Very enjoyable book for pleasure or historical study.

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1 person found this helpful

Husband Hunters

Loved it, very informative on the American social scene of the late 1800's, (unknown to me as an English woman.)

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4 people found this helpful

Busy character list

I was disappointed to find that there are no central characters upon whom the narrative here hinges. Although there is lots of information it's all so fragmentary and reads like a laundry list. But if you enjoy learning about the excesses of the so called 'upper classes' around the turn of the 1900s, you will certainly have your eyes opened. A few good eggs among them but basically a tale of shallow and empty lives played out in a game of keeping up with the Jones' and who is 'in and who is 'out'. The strange mispronunciations by the narrator of commonplace words and names 'grates' and the jury is still out on her voice characterisations.

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1 person found this helpful

Excellent book

Easy to listen to, packed full of detail. I thought it was great. Strongly recommend.

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Nope

This gave me nothing to hold on to. I feel like I had to take notes to follow the story

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