Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)As the other review states, this book doesn't contain any new scholarship, however, King does an excellent and thorough job of recreating the period of American and New York history between the years 1880 and 1914. For those who have only a passing familiarity with the names Astor, Vanderbilt or Belmont, the fiction of Edith Wharton, and America's 19th century aristocracy, A SEASON OF SPLENDOR is a great starting place for research. Once you've consumed the bevy of names, fortunes and scandals this book entails, the bibliography is an even greater resource, since most of the books listed are available in your local library--though you may feel sated by King's unerring eye for detail. I highly recommend this book, as well as King's other works of social history.
Click Here to see more reviews about: A Season of Splendor: The Court of Mrs. Astor in Gilded Age New York
Journey through the splendor and the excesses of the Gilded Age
"Every aspect of life in the Gilded Age took on deeper, transcendent meaning intended to prove the greatness of America: residences beautified their surroundings; works of art uplifted and were shared with the public; clothing exhibited evidence of breeding; jewelry testified to cultured taste and wealth; dinners demonstrated sophisticated palates; and balls rivaled those of European courts in their refinement. The message was unmistakable: the United States had arrived culturally, and Caroline Astor and her circle were intent on leading the nation to unimagined heights of glory."-From A Season of Splendor
Take a dazzling journey through the Gilded Age, the period from roughly the 1870s to 1914, when bluebloods from older, established families met the nouveau riche headlong-railway barons, steel magnates, and Wall Street speculators-and forged an uneasy and glittering new society in New York City. The best of the best were Caroline Astor's 400 families, and she shaped and ruled this high society with steel.
A Season of Splendor is a panoramic sweep across this sumptuous landscape, presenting the families, the wealth, the balls, the clothing, and the mansions in vivid detail-as well as the shocking end of the era with the sinking of the Titanic.
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