Synopses & Reviews
Gossip meets historyand#151;a compulsively readable collection of Hollywood's most notorious clashes and controversies in the spirit of Hollywood Babylon Believe it or not, America's fascination with celebrity culture was thriving well before the days of TMZ, Perez Hilton, Charlie Sheen's breakdown and allegations against Woody Allen. And the stars of yesteryear? They werenand#8217;t always the saints that we make them out to be. BuzzFeed columnist Anne Helen Petersen is here to set the record straight with Scandals of Classic Hollywood. Pulling little-known gems from the archives of film history, Petersen reveals eyebrow-raising information, including:
- The smear campaign against the original It Girl, Clara Bow, started by her best friend
- The heartbreaking story of Montgomery Cliftand#8217;s rapid rise to fame, the car accident that destroyed his face, and the and#147;long suicideand#8221; that followed
- Fatty Arbuckle's descent from Hollywood royalty, fueled by allegations of a boozy orgy turned violent assault
- Why Mae West was arrested and jailed for "indecency charges"
- And much more
Part biography, part cultural history, these stories cover the stuff that films are made of: love, sex, drugs, illegitimate children, illicit affairs, and botched cover-ups. But it's not all just tawdry gossip in the pages of this book. The stories are all contextualized within the boundaries of film, cultural, political, and gender history, making for a read that will inform as it entertains. Based on Petersen's popular column on the Hairpin, but featuring 100% new content,
Scandals of Classic Hollywood is sensationalism made smart.
Review
While many of the facts surrounding these lives are familiar, Mahon weaves page-turner narratives from her passion and affection for these spectacular but often misrepresented women. ---Bookpage
Review
Elizabeth Kerri Mahon's Scandalous Women is an invaluable resource of women's studies, pulling back the curtain of embellishment (often woven by the woman being studied herself) to reveal the stark (sometimes literally!) truth behind some of the greatest women of history -- from ancient pillars like Cleopatra and Boudica to more contemporary glass-ceiling shatterers like Amelia Earhart and Gertrude Bell. Perhaps the best I can say is that Elizabeth Kerri Mahon's work is a magnet for the mind, an education for the misinformed, and scandalously delicious. Very recommended. ---The Trades
Review
There are sexual shenanigans here, to be sure, but also plenty of wonderful portraits of women responsible for major events in history – whether directly or through the men who, thinking themselves the controllers, were in fact the ones being controlled. ---InfoDad
Review
Overall, history lite—a very readable flyby of some notables in women’s history.
---Bethany Latham, Historical Novel Society
Review
I was entranced by
Scandalous Women from page one, and it didn’t let lose its hold on me until I had reached the end . . . If you are looking for entertainment as well as facts that will turn many of your preconceived notions inside out, then this is the book for you. Ms. Mahon has done a wonderful job telling the stories of important women throughout history.
---Book Wenches
Synopsis
The captivating stories behind fifty of the greatest authors and their most famous literary creations Before Who the Hell is Pansy O?Hara ?, there had never been a single volume that explored the backstories of so many of the greatest books in the English language. A work sure to captivate all lovers of language and literature, it reveals in short, pithy chapters, the lives, loves, motivations, and quirky, fascinating details involving fifty of the best-loved books of the Western world.
? When stacked up, the original manuscript of Gone With the Wind stood taller than Margaret Mitchell, its 4' 9 1/2" author
? Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, was part of the Allied team that cracked the Nazi?s Enigma code
? Leo Tolstoy?s wife copied War and Peace by hand . . . seven times
From The Great Gatsby to Harper Lee, from Jaws to J. K . Rowling, Who the Hell Is Pansy O?Hara? offers an entertaining and informative journey through the minds of writers and the life experiences that took these amazing works from notion to novel.
Synopsis
Truth is stranger than fiction. If you've imagined famous writers to be desk-bound drudges, think again. Writers Gone Wild rips back the (book) covers and reveals the seamy underside of the writing life.
Insightful, intriguing, and irresistibly addictive, Writers Gone Wild reveals such fascinating stories as:
* The night Dashiell Hammett hired a Chinese prostitute to break up S. J. Perelman's marriage (and ran off with his wife).
* Why Sylvia Plath bit Ted Hughes on the cheek.
* Why Ernest Hemingway fought a book critic, a modernist poet, and his war correspondent/wife Martha Gellhorn (but not at the same time).
* The near-fatal trip Katherine Anne Porter took while high on marijuana in Mexico.
* Why women's breasts sent Percy Bysshe Shelley screaming from the room.
* The day Virginia Woolf snuck onto a Royal Navy ship disguised as an Abyssinian prince.
Pull up a chair, turn on good reading light, and discover what your favorite writers were up to while away from their desks. Sometimes, they make the wildest characters of all.
Synopsis
The author of Notorious Royal Marriages presents some of history's boldest, baddest, and bawdiest royals. The bad seeds on the family trees of the most powerful royal houses of Europe often became the most rotten of apples: über-violent autocrats Vlad the Impaler and Ivan the Terrible literally reigned in blood. Lettice Knollys strove to mimic the appearance of her cousin Elizabeth I and even stole her man. And Pauline Bonaparte scandalized her brother Napoleon by having a golden goblet fashioned in the shape of her breast.
Chock-full of shocking scenes, titillating tales, and wildly wicked nobles, Royal Pains is a rollicking compendium of the most infamous, capricious, and insatiable bluebloods of Europe.
Synopsis
Throughout history women have caused wars, defied the rules, and brought men to their knees. The famous and the infamous, queens, divorcées, actresses, and outlaws have created a ruckus during their lifetimes-turning heads while making waves.
Scandalous Women tells the stories of the risk takers who have flouted convention, beaten the odds, and determined the course of world events.
* When Cleopatra (69 BC-30 BC) wasn't bathing in asses' milk, the last pharaoh of the Ptolemaic dynasty ruled Egypt and forged an important political alliance with Rome against her enemies-until her dalliance with Marc Antony turned the empire against her.
* Emilie du Châtelet (1706-1748), a mathematician, physicist, author, and paramour of one of the greatest minds in France, Voltaire, shocked society with her unorthodox lifestyle and intellectual prowess-and became a leader in the study of theoretical physics in France at a time when the sciences were ruled by men.
* Long before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1928) fought to end discrimination and the terrible crime of lynching and helped found the NAACP, but became known as a difficult woman for her refusal to compromise and was largely lost in the annals of history.
* Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) had a passion for archaeology and languages, and left her privileged world behind to become one of the foremost chroniclers of British imperialism in the Middle East, and one of the architects of the modern nation of Iraq.
Synopsis
From Nero's nagging mother (whom he found especially annoying after taking her as his lover) to Catherine's stable of studs (not of the equine variety), here is a wickedly delightful look at the most scandalous royal doings you never learned about in history class.
Gleeful, naughty, sometimes perverted-like so many of the crowned heads themselves-A Treasury of Royal Scandals presents the best (the worst?) of royal misbehavior through the ages. From ancient Rome to Edwardian England, from the lavish rooms of Versailles to the dankest corners of the Bastille, the great royals of Europe have excelled at savage parenting, deadly rivalry, pathological lust, and meeting death with the utmost indignity-or just very bad luck.
Synopsis
What happened off the page was often a lot spicier than what was written on it...
Why did Norman Mailer stab his second wife at a party? Who was Edith Whartons secret transatlantic lover? What motivated Anaïs Nin to become a bigamist?
Writers Between the Covers rips the sheets off these and other real-life love stories of the literatisome with fairy tale endings and others that resulted in break-ups, breakdowns, and brawls. Among the writers laid bare are Agatha Christie, who sparked the largest-ever manhunt in England as her marriage fell apart; Arthur Miller, whose jaw-dropping pairing with Marilyn Monroe proved that opposites attract, at least initially; and T.S. Eliot, who slept in a deckchair on his disastrous honeymoon.
From the best break-up letters to the stormiest love triangles to the boldest cougars and cradle-robbers, this fun and accessible volumepacked with lists, quizzes and in-depth exposésreveals literary historys most titillating loves, lusts, and longings.
About the Author
Leslie Carroll is the author of several works of historical nonfiction, womens fiction, and, under the pen names Juliet Grey and Amanda Elyot, is a multipublished author of historical fiction. Her works include
Royal Romances,
Royal Pains,
Royal Affairs, and
Notorious Royal Marriages. She is also a classically trained professional actress with numerous portrayals of virgins, vixens, and villainesses to her credit, and is an award-winning audio book narrator.
A frequent commentator on royal romances and relationships, Leslie has been interviewed by numerous broadcast, online, and print media, including MSNBC.com, USA Today, the Australian Broadcasting Company, NPR, Hearst Television, Inc., and she was a featured royalty historian on CBS nightly news in London during the royal wedding coverage of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. She also appears as an expert on the love lives of Queen Victoria, Marie Antoinette, Catherine the Great, and Napoleon on the Proper Television series The Secret Life of [fill in the name of famous figure]” for Canadas History Channel. Leslie and her husband, Scott, divide their time between New York City and Washington, D.C.