About this title: The story of Evelyn Nesbit is one of glamour, money, sex, and murder, and Uruburu weaves all of these elements into an elegant narrative that reads like the best fiction--only it's all true. Illustrated.
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Description: Good. Book shows minor use. Cover and Binding have minimal wear and the pages have only minimal creases. A tradition of southern quality and service. All books guaranteed at the Atlanta Book Company. read more
Description: Very Good. 1594483698 light shelf wear / edge wear cover / pages very good condition//"Buy with Confidence-Satisfaction Guaranteed! Customer Service Makes All the Difference. " read more
Description: New. 1594483698 SATISFACTION GUARANTEED! NEW Book! May have remainder mark. Most orders ship within 1 BUSINESS DAY with ORDER CONFIRMATION. Great Book at a Great Value! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Very Good. Former Library book. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Date Published: 2008-05-01
ISBN-13:9781594489938ISBN:1594489939
Description: New. A great book in new condition. may show slight signs of shelf wear. We provide USPS confirmation tracking and email when we ship. We want your complete satisfaction. read more
Edition: Advanced Reading Copy (ARC)
Binding: S Trade Paperback
Publisher: Riverhead Books, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9781594489938ISBN:1594489939
Description: Good. This book has some occasional pencil marginalia, with fairly copious notes in the front endpapers, and a trace of shelf wear, but is otherwise in excellent condition. It is square and solidly bound with no creasing to the spine. It remains tight and sports a clean, lustrous, uncreased cover--you're bound to treasure this splendid book! ! ! NOTE-ADVANCE READER'S EDITION; TRADE PAPERBACK. read more
Edition: First Edition, First Printing
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Riverhead Books, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9781594489938ISBN:1594489939
Description: As New/As New. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall 1594489939 Gift quality. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9781594489938ISBN:1594489939
Description: Near Fine in Fine dust jacket. 9781594489938. Dust jacket is pristine; minor shelfwear to boards; NO internal markings. Architecture. Pasadena's finest independent new and used bookstore.; 400 pages. read more
"This is the definitive book on the Evelyn Nesbit-Stanford White scandal. I have read others, but this one is by far the best, as it focuses mostly on Evelyn's point of view. For anyone who is interested in this fascinating story, American Eve by Paula Uruburu is a must-read! The book contains some never-before-seen photos, and Uruburu writes in a manner that reads as a novel (even though it is non-fiction)...and the story is definitely a page-turner. Uruburu gets into Evelyn's head so that we can see why she did what she did, and we can sympathize with all of the pressures (financial and otherwise) that were placed upon her at a young age. (I also enjoyed Uruburu's vivid descriptions of old New York.) The relationship between Evelyn and Stanford White was very complex, and Stanford's portrayal as a "benevolent vampire" and a "wizard" makes you understand Evelyn's attraction to him. The story is emotionally engaging and also heartbreaking...it's so sad that this one relationship affected Evelyn's life so deeply and removed all of the good opportunities that she could have had. (If this happened now, Evelyn would have been all over TMZ and People Magazine...she wouldn't have ended up in such an unforunate state these days!) Uruburu does a fantastic job with her research (there were so many details in this book that I had never heard about before), and as I previously mentioned, she has a great writing style. I highly recommend this book, and I hope that Uruburu will write some more!"
"This was a pretty decent read, a biography of Evelyn Nesbit. In a nutshell, she was a fairly famous model and chorus girl who then became notorious when her millionaire husband shot and killed her former lover, architect Stanford White, in front of a large crowd of theater-goers in Union Square in 1906. Adding to the salaciousness of the thing was the point that she was quite young, a teenager when White first took advantage of her.
Overall, the story is extremely interesting and makes Evelyn seem like a genuinely real, complex person and recreates the environment of turn-of-the-century New York City. Uruburu's presentation of this story is extremely sympathetic to Nesbit, which feels legitimate. She was a young girl without a lot of options, education, or support from her family (dead father, helpless and generally weird mother) who discovered that artistic modeling was something that she could do to bring in an income, and then, at 16, was preyed upon by White. I know that in some interpretations of the murder story, Nesbit is presented as more of a conniver, playing White for money and then marrying Harry Thaw for his money and then fanning the flames between the two. Uruburu is fairly convincing that Nesbit was muddling along as best she could while in an extremely disadvantaged position.
There were two points that I kept mulling over while reading. First, there are a lot of adjectives flying around for a nonfiction book. In parts, it almost reads like a novel, Uruburu makes a lot of assumptions about what people were thinking and how they reacted and what motivated them. I know a lot of her source material is right from the trial transcripts and from Nesbit's own autobiographies, but that's subjective as well. This was a fairly minor issue for me. More distracting was the treatment of the husband/murderer, Harry Thaw. He's depicted as an absolute maniacal psychopath, which seems like a reasonable argument to put forward ... but then that leads to the issue of, in that case, why Evelyn would marry him. I felt like the author was wobbly around this issue. There are some few points where the author says that there's really no way of knowing why (which I think is completely reasonable), but overall the tone of the book seems to flip-flop between Thaw being extremely crafty and able to hide his criminal insanity from Evelyn, and then on the other hand, being so completely crazy that he couldn't control his actions. This combination seems unlikely to me, especially if sustained over a period of years.
In general, though, I enjoyed this a lot, probably in part because I am already very intrigued by this time period. And I think Evelyn Nesbit is still breathtakingly good looking, in the sense that her style of beauty has held up very well over the years ... as opposed to some women who were considered great beauties in their age but it's harder to see it now.
Grade: B+ Recommended: To fans of Gilded Age New York, people who like contemplating the nature of celebrity, and those interested in women's roles and issues at the turn of the century. (2009/41)"
"As a teenager at the turn of the 20th century in New York, Evelyn Nesbit became the epitome of the 'it' girl. Her likeness was on the cover of postcards and magazines and she eventually became a 'floradora' girl and danced in popular shows in the city. She was well on her way to becoming a popular figure in entertainment.
Then she met 48 year old Stanford White. He arranged to meet Evelyn through another chorus girl in the floradora show. He took his time with Evelyn and her mother, slowing winning their trust before showing his true colours. While still under White's 'tutelage' Evelyn met John Barrymore and almost had a normal relationship with someone her own age. But fate, Stanford White and her mother intervened and it was not to be. With no adult guidance and little experience with hidden agendas, the naïve Evelyn fell prey to older men who her mother allowed intentionally or not, into their lives. Finally, Evelyn was pursued and won by Harry K. Thaw, another poor choice.
Though these events took place over a 100 years ago, Evelyn's experiences echo resoundingly across the years to mirror those of today's young celebrities: beautiful young girl finds success as a model or actress, becomes famous, is relentlessly pursued by fans, some become friends - their real motives cleverly hidden, but once revealed result in intense pressure from media and even tragedy. Her life has become a nightmare. Sound like anyone familiar? Britney Spears perhaps? How about Lindsay Lohan? American Eve is a cautionary tale that is undoubtedly destined to be ignored by those it could help the most.
The story is told well and the research done on the subject is meticulous. The reader is given a sense of 'place' and 'prejudice' via pictures of the principals involved and buildings and the descriptions of New York at that time. Extreme poverty as well as extreme decadence through wealth is laid out in depth. It is interesting to note in the acknowledgments that the author had the support of Evelyn's grandson and daughter-in-law in writing this story, lending it credibility and a genuineness that might have been difficult to achieve otherwise.
I was very excited to have the opportunity to review this book. Over the years I've read a few articles regarding Evelyn Nesbit that I'd found intriguing. This book added a lot more detail and did not disappoint. I recommend American Eve to anyone who is fascinated by recent history and the culture of celebrity and how it has always impacted our lives."
"I'm currently trolling for books to use in history classes on "Crime and Justice in America," so I picked this one up. It was definitely an interesting read, although it wasn't perfect. The author approached the book with the assumption that her readers knew the basic story, and while newspapers at the time may have labeled it "the crime of the century," I'm not sure that many people today know very much about it; the most common thing may be that images of velvet swings associated with the turn-of-the-century now make sense...
The author did put forward a thesis: that the Thaw murder trial ended a particular turn-of-the-century American subculture in which the wealthiest Americans could get whatever they wanted by paying for it and could also keep the stories of their immoral and/or illegal activities out of the press. Unfortunately, the author didn't really back up that claim. The closing of the book focused exclusively on Evelyn Nesbit's life after the trial, rather than talking about the broader cultural significance of the case."
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