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THE VANDERBILT WOMEN

Name: THE VANDERBILT WOMEN
Author: Clarice Stasz
ISBN: 0-312-06486-1

DYNASTY OF WEALTH, GLAMOUR, AND TRAGEDY

by Clarice Stasz ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 2, 1991

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Transcending the usual lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous sensationalism, Stasz (American Dreamers, 1988, etc.) here creates a captivating and thoughtful blend of social history and family chronicle. Blessed with unassailable pedigree and unimaginable wealth, the Vanderbilt women, argues Stasz, present a tantalizing illustration of ``the unfolding of female rebellion from one generation to the next.'' Allotting space and considerable understanding to the expected social matrons and neglected wives (and not slighting abundant and well-known scandals), the author takes particular delight in the many Vanderbilt renegades. Chief among them is the extraordinary Alva Smith, who turned her considerable energies from the task of conquering society (finding a suitably rich husband in sportsman William K. Vanderbilt; breaking the ``old money'' barriers maintained by the formidable Mrs. Astor—of ``400'' fame—with her spectacular social extravaganzas) to that of shocking it. Divorcing the philandering ``Willie,'' she married sympathetic aesthete (and millionaire) Harry Belmont, and, as the widowed Mrs. Belmont, became a startlingly progressive and hard-working leader of the women's movement (advocating not just suffrage, but equal rights). A quieter rebel, her niece Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the other star of Stasz's study, became a notable sculptor and patron of the arts, supporting and championing the American artists who clustered around her Greenwich Village studio, and later founding the Whitney Museum. Unfortunately, as Stasz ably points out, the very real accomplishments of these women (and of Gertrude's famous niece Gloria, sympathetically portrayed here as far more than an earnest dilettante) were often belittled (not least by themselves) due to their immense wealth. Their most striking characteristic, the author notes, is that, consigned to a ``women's sphere'' that isolated them from the power reserved for male descendants, they used their freedom and resources to carve stubbornly individual existences. A deft, delightful, and compulsively readable mixture of gossip and feminist history. (Twenty-four pages of b&w photos—not seen.)

Pub Date: Dec. 2, 1991

ISBN: 0-312-06486-1

Page Count: 416

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1991

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)