A fascinating, scholarly glimpse into what it meant to be a Southern belle.
This collection of historical correspondence illuminates a North Carolina belle’s upbringing, courtships, marriage, and death at age 22 following childbirth.
“On the carpet,” in the parlance of 1830s America, meant to be under consideration; applied to young women, it meant being on the marriage market—and in constant danger of being replaced by fresher stock. Such concerns underlie many of the letters here written by and to Penelope Skinner (1818-1841); the chief correspondents are her brother Tristrim Lowther Skinner (1820-1862); her father, Joseph Blount Skinner (1781-1851); and the husband she married in 1840, Dr. Thomas Davis Warren (1817-1878). (The originals are among the Skinner Family Papers, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Southern Historical Collection.) In this scholarly, thoroughly researched account, Maillard (The Belles of Williamsburg, 2015, etc.), a Skinner descendant, has assembled a valuable collection of primary sources and provided illuminating notes, comments, illustrations, and an extensive bibliography and index. The letters begin in 1832 with a joint missive from the Skinner children to their father expressing concern over a cholera epidemic and end in 1841 with a condolence note to Penelope’s father after her death—indicative of the 19th century’s many dangers. Readers learn about Penelope’s schooling, homesickness, her close relationship with her brother, and episodes of depression. Many letters ask after family servants, such as “Aunt Barbara,” the child’s African-American nanny. The Southern belle is an archetype, but it’s established in most readers’ minds by popular conceptions like Gone With the Wind. This volume gives direct insight into the complicated, chancy world of matchmaking. Letters are filled with Penelope’s worries about being “on the carpet,” and competitive, catty remarks about other girls: “I should be pleased also to hear from Mary Mosely is she as large as ever,” she writes in 1839. Though considered thin-faced and sallow, Penelope had 30 offers and three failed public engagements; suitors were perhaps put off by her father’s “queer ways.” It’s poignant that achieving her main goals, marriage and childbirth, brought about her early death.
A fascinating, scholarly glimpse into what it meant to be a Southern belle.Pub Date: June 20, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Not flawless, but one of the best recent analyses of the contemporary woes of American economics and politics.
Remarkably comprehensive and coherent analysis of and prescriptions for America’s contemporary economic malaise by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Smith (Rethinking America, 1995, etc.).
“Over the past three decades,” writes the author, “we have become Two Americas.” We have arrived at a new Gilded Age, where “gross inequality of income and wealth” have become endemic. Such inequality is not simply the result of “impersonal and irresistible market forces,” but of quite deliberate corporate strategies and the public policies that enabled them. Smith sets out on a mission to trace the history of these strategies and policies, which transformed America from a roughly fair society to its current status as a plutocracy. He leaves few stones unturned. CEO culture has moved since the 1970s from a concern for the general well-being of society, including employees, to the single-minded pursuit of personal enrichment and short-term increases in stock prices. During much of the ’70s, CEO pay was roughly 40 times a worker’s pay; today that number is 367. Whether it be through outsourcing and factory closings, corporate reneging on once-promised contributions to employee health and retirement funds, the deregulation of Wall Street and the financial markets, a tax code which favors overwhelmingly the interests of corporate heads and the superrich—all of which Smith examines in fascinating detail—the American middle class has been left floundering. For its part, government has simply become an enabler and partner of the rich, as the rich have turned wealth into political influence and rigid conservative opposition has created the politics of gridlock. What, then, is to be done? Here, Smith’s brilliant analyses turn tepid, as he advocates for “a peaceful political revolution at the grassroots” to realign the priorities of government and the economy but offers only the vaguest of clues as to how this might occur.
Not flawless, but one of the best recent analyses of the contemporary woes of American economics and politics.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6966-8
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.
A basketball legend reflects on his life in the game and a life lived in the “nightmare of endlessly repetitive and constant pain, agony, and guilt.”
Walton (Nothing but Net, 1994, etc.) begins this memoir on the floor—literally: “I have been living on the floor for most of the last two and a half years, unable to move.” In 2008, he suffered a catastrophic spinal collapse. “My spine will no longer hold me,” he writes. Thirty-seven orthopedic injuries, stemming from the fact that he had malformed feet, led to an endless string of stress fractures. As he notes, Walton is “the most injured athlete in the history of sports.” Over the years, he had ground his lower extremities “down to dust.” Walton’s memoir is two interwoven stories. The first is about his lifelong love of basketball, the second, his lifelong battle with injuries and pain. He had his first operation when he was 14, for a knee hurt in a basketball game. As he chronicles his distinguished career in the game, from high school to college to the NBA, he punctuates that story with a parallel one that chronicles at each juncture the injuries he suffered and overcame until he could no longer play, eventually turning to a successful broadcasting career (which helped his stuttering problem). Thanks to successful experimental spinal fusion surgery, he’s now pain-free. And then there’s the music he loves, especially the Grateful Dead’s; it accompanies both stories like a soundtrack playing off in the distance. Walton tends to get long-winded at times, but that won’t be news to anyone who watches his broadcasts, and those who have been afflicted with lifelong injuries will find the book uplifting and inspirational. Basketball fans will relish Walton’s acumen and insights into the game as well as his stories about players, coaches (especially John Wooden), and games, all told in Walton’s fervent, witty style.
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1686-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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