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Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, the Birth of the It Girl, and the Crime of the Century
Riverhead
May 2008
On Sale: May 1, 2008
400 pages
ISBN: 1594489939
EAN: 9781594489938
Hardcover
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Historical | Non-Fiction Biography
The scandalous story of America's first supermodel, sex goddess, and modern celebrity, Evelyn Nesbit, the temptress at the center of Stanford White's famous murder, whose iconic life story reflected all the paradoxes of America's Gilded Age.
Known to millions before her sixteenth birthday in 1900, Evelyn Nesbit was the most photographed woman of her era, an iconic figure who set the standard for female beauty. Women wanted to be her. Men just wanted her. When her life of fantasy became all too real, and her jealous millionaire husband, Harry K. Thaw, killed her loverβcelebrity architect Stanford White, builder of the Washington Square Arch and much of New York Cityβshe found herself at the center of the "Crime of the Century" and the popular courtroom drama that followedβa scandal that signaled the beginning of a national obsession with youth, beauty, celebrity, and sex.
The story of Evelyn Nesbit is one of glamour, money, romance, sex, madness, and murder, and Paula Uruburu weaves all of these elements into an elegant narrative that reads like the best fictionβ only it's all true. American Eve goes far beyond just literary biography; it paints a picture of America as it crossed from the Victorian era into the modern, foreshadowing so much of our contemporary culture today.
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