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 enlarge | Author: Paula Uruburu
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 11247
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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| Customer Reviews:
 Fascinating story August 4, 2008
2 out of 3 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
3 out of 3 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
3 out of 3 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
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
Compelling, impressively researched, crisply written July 24, 2008
Seldom do we get a book offering the virtues of "American Eve." Researched with care and intelligence, written with a crisp touch and truly compelling, it is remarkable. I've known of Evelyn Nesbit all my life and to my journalism classes read a newspaper account of the night of the White murder which reamins absolutely riveting. Having seen many photos of Nesbit, I curiously did not realize how timeless her beauty is, how contemporary she looks. And that her beauty isn't classic as much as it is astounding. The book covers all the bases and, oh brother, is it hard to put down. I kept coming back to it and once finished started it again. The recreation of an era long past is remarkable, but as remarkable in the menace which lurks throughout the story. Nesbit herself is part of that menace. Sweet, beautiful, clever, observant, she is also distressingly self-destructive and adept at attracting the wrong kind of man in the wrong kind of way. Perhaps if she'd had a decent mother, but read the story for yourself.
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