Friday Finds – August 15, 2008

It’s that time of the week again!  MizB at Should be Reading has organized a weekly round-up of the books that have come into our lives.  Here’s my list:

I received an ARC of Laura Claridge’s Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age to review for the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.  I’m looking forward to learning more about the lady who taught us how to set the table and address condolence cards; where do some of these customs originate?  And who decides what the “correct” way to fold a napkin is?  The book will be published in hardcover in October 2008; here’s the publisher’s synopsis (I learned a lot about her just from reading this!):

“What would Emily Post do?” Even today, Americans cite the author of the perennial bestseller Etiquette as a touchstone for proper behavior. But who was the woman behind the myth, the authority on good manners who has outlasted all comers? Award-winning author Laura Claridge presents the first authoritative biography of the unforgettable woman who changed the mindset of millions of Americans, an engaging book that sweeps from the Gilded Age to the 1960s.

Born shortly after the Civil War, Emily Post was a daughter of high society, the only child of an ambitious Baltimore architect, Bruce Price, and his wellborn wife. Within a few years of his daughter’s birth, Price moved his family to New York City, where they mingled with the Roosevelts and the Astors as well as with the new crowd in town–J. P. Morgan and the Vanderbilt clan. Blossoming into one of Manhattan’s most sought-after debutantes, Emily went on to marry Edwin Post, planning to re-create in her own home the happiness she’d observed between her parents. Instead, she would find herself in the middle of a scandalous divorce, its humiliating details splashed across the front pages of New York newspapers for months.

Traumatic though it was, the end of her marriage forced Emily Post to become her own person. She would spend the next fifteen years writing novels and attending high-powered literary events alongside the likes of Mark Twain and Edith Wharton, but in middle age she decided she would try something different.

When it debuted in 1922 with a tiny first print run, Etiquette represented a fifty-year-old woman at her wisest–and a country at its wildest. Claridge
addresses the secret of Etiquette’s tremendous success and gives us a panoramic view of the culture from which Etiquette took its shape, as its author meticulously updated her book twice a decade to keep it consistent with America’s constantly changing social landscape.

A tireless advocate for middle-class and immigrant Americans, Emily Post became the emblem of a new kind of manners in which etiquette and ethics were forever entwined. Now, nearly fifty years after her death, we still feel her enormous influence on how we think Best Society should behave.

The Grift, by Debra Ginsberg just came out in hardcover this week!  This sounds like an exciting mystery with lots of twists, centering around a woman who fakes psychic powers, then comes to question if, perhaps, she does have the ability.  Here’s what Publisher’s Weekly has to say:

Ginsberg’s second novel is an entertaining whodunit and an invigorating tale about a damaged young storefront psychic who learns how to live truthfully. Although she has worked as a psychic since childhood, Marina Marks does not believe that psychic abilities exist. Instead, she uses her intuition and observational skills to hoodwink her clients. Arriving in Southern California from Florida, she acquires a new set of clients: Madeleine, the hostess, desperate to maintain her hold on her wealthy husband; Cooper, in love with a psychiatrist who refuses to admit that he is gay; and Eddie, a married womanizer frustrated by his inability to seduce Marina. Ginsberg deftly shows how Marina cultivates her clients’ dependency—and her own income—from their desperation, as well as how easily her clients’ trust in her deteriorates. Soon, the threat of violence that Marina left Florida to escape flares up anew, and Marina begins to suspect, to her confusion and dismay, that she may actually be psychic. Ginsberg thoroughly exploits her clever premise, and Marina’s handling of her troubles—romantic, professional, mystical—ring true through to the redemptive end.

The Triumph of Deborah by Eva Etzioni-Halevy came out in paperback in February.  I’ve read great reviews of it, and am a huge fan of historical fiction.  A summary from the publisher:

The richly imagined tale of Deborah, the courageous Biblical warrior who saved her people from certain destruction

Filled with brilliantly vivid historical detail, The Triumph of Deborah is the absorbing and riveting tale of one of the most beloved figures in the Old Testament, and a tribute to feminine strength and independence.

This week my mix includes biography, mystery/fiction, and historical fiction … where should I start?