American Eve

By her sixteenth birthday in 1900, Evelyn Nesbit was known to millions: the most photographed woman of the ragtime era and an iconic figure who set the modern standard for female beauty. She was the model for the Gibson Girl and a Florodora chorus girl whose underage sexuality titillated the stage door johnnies of late Victorian Manhattan. But her life of fantasy became all too real when her insane and obsessively jealous millionaire husband, Harry K. Thaw, murdered her lover- the famed architect Stanford White. Evelyn found herself at the center at what came to be called "the Crime of the Century". The scandal and the wildly popular courtroom drama that followed sparked a media frenzy that captivated the nation and signaled the beginning of America's growing obsession with youth, beauty, glamorous celebrity, and sex.“Paula Uruburu serves up an intriguing and meticulously researched slice of American history. Evelyn Nesbit typified the glorious excesses of the Gilded Age, and this story has everything: sex, deception, drama, and a lurid love triangle, all culminating in the crime of the century.”—Karen Abbott, author of Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul “Of all the famous beauties of a hundred years ago, Evelyn Nesbit is the only one who would still turn heads today. Paula Uruburu's triumph is to fix this very modern-looking girl in her proper time and place, and also to describe the New York of the early 1900s so vividly that we feel we, too, could be strolling towards the 21st Street apartment where the teen was seduced by Stanford White—or sitting in Madison Square Garden on the fatal evening that White was shot dead.”—Mike Dash, author of Satan’s Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York’s Trial of the Century“Wonderfully absorbing . . . A lurid tabloid story of yore brought to fresh life and relevance with remarkable insight, verve and wisdom. Old New York is laid bare in all its decadence and the cult of pubescent beauty traced to its source, all with worldliness, wit, humor, compassion, and suspense. The result is a real page-turner.”—Philip Lopate, author of Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan and Writing New YorkFor more information and updates check Dr. Uruburu's profile at Goodreads.com:http://www.goodreads.com/profile/puruburu&