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Showing posts from December, 2015

Scarlet Woman: The Life of Diana Vreeland

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Trailer for Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel  'She had this taste for the extraordinary...she took the mundane and the mediocre and she made it ravishing, and she made it OK for women to be ambitious, for women to be outlandish and extraordinary and for women to garner attention.' - Anjelica Houston I’ve been asked what criteria I use to determine whether or not someone is a “Scandalous Woman?”  Most of the women that I have written about were either Scandalous for their love lives or because they operated outside the normal boundaries of society as they were dictated by the mores of the time.  For example, Elizabeth Blackwell would be considered scandalous because she dared to apply to medical school to become a doctor in the 1840’s, at a time when women were barely educated apart from reading, writing, and a little light math. Exploring the sciences considered beyond a women’s intelligence. So why Diana Vreeland one might ask? Why write about her? Most pe

Book Review: Melanie Benjamin's The Swans of Fifth Avenue

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The Swans of Fifth Avenue – Melanie Benjamin Print Length:  368 pages Publisher:  Delacorte Press (January 26, 2016) Publication Date:  January 26, 2016 Sold by:  Random House LLC How Acquired:  Net Galley What's it about:  Of all the glamorous stars of New York high society, none blazes brighter than Babe Paley. Her flawless face regularly graces the pages of Vogue, and she is celebrated and adored for her ineffable style and exquisite taste, especially among her friends—the alluring socialite Swans Slim Keith, C. Z. Guest, Gloria Guinness, and Pamela Churchill. By all appearances, Babe has it all: money, beauty, glamour, jewels, influential friends, a high-profile husband, and gorgeous homes. But beneath this elegantly composed exterior dwells a passionate woman—a woman desperately longing for true love and connection. Enter Truman Capote. This diminutive golden-haired genius with a larger-than-life personality explodes onto the scene, setting Babe and her