Brisk, wise, and admiring ... The book at times lacks the internal combustion of longer histories ... Shines when portraying the groundswells altering high society
Beautifully written ... Absorbing ... Strouse complicates the picture with deft accounts of both Sargent’s and the Wertheimer family’s tribulations beyond these questions of identity ... You feel in good hands reading Strouse. She is measured, her research is impeccable, and she tells of interesting lives in interesting times with interesting footnotes to boot.
Vivid social portraiture ... A book as finely crafted as the portraits it describes, tells a story that is both specific and universal—about the yearnings for recognition and the tenuous rewards of achieving it.
Delicate and thorough ... An absorbing, frequently tragic portrayal of that glittering, fragile epoch, which would so swiftly be annihilated by the horrors of the twentieth century ... Beautifully and generously illustrated.
Swats away easy summary. Its barely two hundred and fifty pages are not a biography of Sargent, or a definitive history of the Gilded Age or its trappings, or a definitive account of anything ... Acidly delightful.
