Pauline’s blandishments grow quickly tedious, but Fraser does a lively job of delineating the story of her audacious clan.
Napoleon’s younger sister—beautiful but not particularly compelling—receives effusive treatment from English biographer Fraser (Princesses: The Six Daughters of George III, 2005, etc.).
The author relies on Napoleon’s riveting odyssey to propel the insipid life story of Pauline Bonaparte (1780–1825), whose legendary milk baths were the most interesting thing about her. Their fates moved in tandem: Napoleon determined whom his favorite sister would wed, and the two marriages he arranged would mark her fortune, mostly for good. In 1796, with her brother fresh from victories as head of the Army of Italy, Pauline was a vivacious, unschooled 15-year-old refugee from Corsica, living with her widowed mother and large close-knit family in Marseille. She fell in love with the wealthy, much older Stanislas Fréron, but Napoleon came down firmly against the match—luckily, it turned out, as Fréron was denounced as an embezzler and disgraced. Instead, her brother chose his loyal second-in-command, brigade general Victor Emmanuel Leclerc, who proved an honorable, upright man but no match for his sensual, spoiled teenaged spouse. Marginalized as Napoleon’s star rose, Leclerc was sent to quell Toussaint Louverture’s uprising in Saint-Domingue in 1802. Native resistance and the pestilential climate quickly defeated the French. Leclerc died of yellow fever within a year, and Pauline returned to Paris to join her vastly enriched family, elevated by Napoleon’s position as first consul for life. Another advantageous suitor soon materialized, and Pauline wed Prince Camillo Borghese, a Roman citizen of high birth and huge wealth. He was also a “booby,” notes Fraser, as ignorant and good-looking as Pauline, but not as cunning. The match proved disastrous, and Pauline ran through lovers until nearly the last year of her life. She remained loyal to the end to her brother, even setting up a household for him on Elba.
Pauline’s blandishments grow quickly tedious, but Fraser does a lively job of delineating the story of her audacious clan.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-307-26544-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2008
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
For the author’s fans.
A Fox News journalist and talk show host sets out to prove that she is not “an empty St. John suit in five-inch stiletto heels.”
The child of devout Christians, Minnesota native Carlson’s first love was music. She began playing violin at age 6 and quickly revealed that she was not only a prodigy, but also a little girl who thrived on pleasing audiences. Working with top teachers, she developed her art over the years. But by 16, Carlson began “chafing at [the] rigid, structured life” of a concert violinist–in-training and temporarily put music aside. At the urging of her mother, the high achiever set her sights on winning the Miss T.E.E.N. pageant, where she was first runner-up. College life at Stanford became yet another quest for perfection that led Carlson to admit it was “not attainable” after she earned a C in one class. At the end of her junior year and again at the urging of her mother, Carlson entered the 1989 Miss America pageant, which she would go on to win thanks to a brilliant violin performance. Dubbed the “smart Miss America,” Carlson struggled with pageant stereotypes as well as public perceptions of who she was. Being in the media spotlight every day during her reign, however, also helped her decide on a career in broadcast journalism. Yet success did not come easily. Sexual harassment dogged her, and many expressed skepticism about her abilities due to her pageant past. Even after she rose to national prominence, first as a CBS news broadcaster and then as a Fox talk show host, Carlson continued—and continues—to be labeled as “dumb or a bimbo.” Her history clearly demonstrates that she is neither. However, Carlson’s overly earnest tone, combined with her desire to show her Minnesota “niceness…in action,” as well as the existence of “abundant brain cells,” dampens the book’s impact.
For the author’s fans.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-42745-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
