American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White: The Birth of the "It" Girl and the Crime of the Century | 
 enlarge | Author: Paula Uruburu
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  21 reviews
Sales Rank: 22026
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 1594489939
Dewey Decimal Number: 974.71041092
EAN: 9781594489938
ASIN: 1594489939
Publication Date: May 1, 2008
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Product Description
The scandalous story of Americas first supermodel, sex goddess, and modern celebrity, Evelyn Nesbit, the temptress at the center of Stanford Whites famous murder, whose iconic life story reflected all the paradoxes of Americas 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 lovercelebrity architect Stanford White, builder of the Washington Square Arch and much of New York Cityshe found herself at the center of the Crime of the Century and the popular courtroom drama that followeda 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 narrativethat reads like the best fiction only its 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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| Customer Reviews: Read 16 more reviews...
 The first "Trial of the Century" August 21, 2008
When a historically minded person speaks of the "trial of the century", meaning the 20th century, several come immediately to mind: O.J., Leopold and Loeb, Nuremburg, Sacco and Vanzetti, Scopes, among others. However, the trial of Harry Thaw for the cold-blooded murder of Stanford White was the first of the century (1906), and perhaps the one with the most drama. That was because the chief witness was Evelyn Nesbit, the wife of Thaw, and the former seductee and mistress of White. The author gives us a thorough review of Evelyn's lfe, and her rapid rise to fame as a young girl. This rise is even more remarkable when you consider it happened in the first decade of the last century, before radio, television, the Internet, and supermarket tabloids (although there were some trashy papers in existence). It's a remarkable story, and moves through the high society world of New York, Pittsburgh, and cities in Europe. These people lived quite a different lifestyle than we do today, at least those of us who are not multimillionaires or celebrities famous for being famous. Evelyn had quite an eventful life, and it is retold in a breezy fashion that it easy to read. Occasionally the language gets a bit overblown, but that's often how things were in those days; sometimes events took on a larger-than-life appearance. To anyone interested in social and legal history in the early part of the last century,I highly recoimmend this book.
 Fascinating story August 4, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
As a fan of architecture, I was well aware of Stanford White (of McKim, Mead and White) before I first read of his affair with Evelyn Nesbit and subsequent murder by her husband in E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime. It is a startlingly tragic tale, so it was with much interest that I read this more complete telling of the story. On the whole, I felt that Uruburu did a good, but not great job telling it.
There were certain events in the book that just didn't seem to add up, and I see from some of the more critical reviews here, that there may be indeed be certain information that the author either omitted or did not find in her research. For instance, there are nagging inconsistencies regarding Evelyn's financial status throughout the book, but particularly after the murder trial. She is said to be left penniless, but then we learn that her son attends boarding school. How is that possible?
It is more believable that Evelyn knew that the Thaw family would pay her handsomely for her testimony and that she struck a bargain with them. After all, the Thaws had made a career of paying people to keep quiet about Harry's deviant behavior and it would have been clear to them that she held the key to Harry's fate. Evelyn herself was smart enough, and she certainly disliked the Thaws enough, to have realized the gold mine at her feet.
I had the feeling that Uruburu was always trying to find elements of Evelyn's story that fit most cozily into a feminist-type agenda and perhaps this is why there are so many places in the book where the pieces don't quite add up. Evelyn is mostly portrayed as a victim of the times and of the men in her life, even though it is clear that she understood at least some of the power she held over them.
On the whole, however, I enjoyed Uruburu's writing style and her vivid descriptions of life at the turn of the last century. And I came away knowing far more about the compelling characters whose lives came together in such a terribly tragic collision of events.
A great read, but odd editing August 1, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Paula Uruburu has done a magnificent job of telling the story of Evelyn Nesbit, the girl who was the reason Harry Thaw murdered architect Stanford White. You feel as though you were in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and New York because of her exquisite sense of detail in describing the culture and moral values of the time. Despite all the detail, the story never gets bogged down in minutiae, and it's a remarkably easy and pleasurable (if reading about a woman being brutally beaten can be called "pleasurable") read.
I get the impression, however, that the author and editor were running out of time and space as the deadline for the final version approached, so they cut out huge chunks of narrative at the end. The last few chapters are very spare and choppy compared to what was previously written, and leaves the reader wanting to know more about what happened to the main characters after the trial.
There were a couple minor inconsistencies that I found puzzling. In 1904, Evelyn Nesbit had an appendectomy that left her hair falling out in clumps, so her head was shaved. Cut to a year later, where Evelyn and Harry are married and living in Pittsburgh. Harry gets Evelyn to pose with her head through a hole in a sheet and her hair pinned up above the sheet. She was posing as the wives of Bluebeard, and her head was supposed to appear severed. The hair looks at least a foot long, which is impossible growth in one year, yet the author makes it sound as though it were her real hair.
Another instance is where Harry would enter her bedroom at night and demand to hear the story of White's debauchery over and over again. He insisted that she refer to White as "The Beast", or simply "B". It sounds as though this started when they were married; however, when Evelyn and Harry eat at a restaurant the day of the murder and White enters, there is a flashback to premarital days when Harry, paranoid even then, made Evelyn promise to tell Harry every time she encountered "the Beast". I wonder when his insistence on this terminology actually began.
An index would have been welcome, too. When Thaw's sister was intentionally or unintentionally referred to as the "Countess of Vermouth", I missed the humor because as she was a minor character, I didn't pay close attention to her title. It would have been nice to be able to quickly check the index and see that she was actually the Countess of Yarmouth.
These are minor quibbles, however. Uruburu has made a valuable contribution to our understanding of that time period and "the crime of the century".
The best book about the case July 29, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The new book has been called the best-ever rendering of the case, and it's impossible to disagree.
Whether or not you've read other books about the fatal love triangle between Stanford White, Evelyn Nesbit, and Harry Thaw before, you may relish this telling as I did. Like generations of tabloid readers before me, I "gorged" myself "on every morbid morsel."
It is the author's decision to stay entirely within the point of view of Evelyn Nesbit, the apex of the love triangle, that makes this book so engaging -- that and her aesthetic vocabulary. This version of one of the most infamous crimes of passion of the 20th century features a sable-hared Pandora, a scheming roue' who fell slave to her, and another man who was fatefully smitten. The molten force of emotions fairly sets fire to the pages.
Harold Schechter referred to the author's "breathless narrative pace," and that's what's to like. Other authors have bored students of the scandal with long-winded descriptions of how great an architect Stanford White was. This author doesn't go beyond a mention of his career.
This author has also rendered two murder trials in only a few pages, focusing on what mattered to the heroine of the story -- her time on the witness stand.
In this telling of the backwards fairy tale, Evelyn Nesbit is alternately lost, willful, wicked, giddy, blissful, unguarded, needy, starved for attention, desperately alone, impulsive, and spiteful. She is a voluptuary sultana, the little Galatea, the molten-eyed soubrette who inspired scenes worthy of Chekhov.
Bought this on a whim... July 25, 2008
because it sounded interesting but I really knew nothing about Evelyn Nesbit or the murder case that swirled around her. I have to say the risk paid off! I found this book interesting from the first page. Uruburu writes in a manner that oozes details yet reads like fiction, for me the best type of non-fiction writing. I compare this book favorably to Erik Larson's "Devil in the White City" or Karen Abbott's "Sin in the Second City" and recommend "American Eve" (and the other two) highly.
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