RaveNewCityLit\"Like the best biographies, Kingmaker has moments when the story sails along, vibrantly evoking Jazz Age Manhattan, Montmartre, or postwar London; the book is riveting, and, given its subject, at times salacious. Purnell’s confident voice and her citations go a long way to create an air of objectivity amidst a complex history that is not without scandal. There is a cinematic quality to the biography, which reads like a novel—sweeping, swelling ... To step into this five-hundred-page-plus saga is to open the door to a hothouse of opulence and ambition, of Sturm und Drang that can feel exhausting. Yet as we hurtle toward the 2024 presidential election...I can think of no better time to pick up the well-told story of one of the twentieth century’s most powerful female kingmakers.\
