1 2

The Women of Rothschild Spiral-Bound | 2022-10-25

Natalie Livingstone

★★★☆☆+ from 501 to 1,000 ratings

$35.09 - Free Shipping
Natalie Livingstone reveals the role of women in shaping the legacy of the famous Rothschild dynasty, synonymous with wealth and power.

From the East End of London to the Eastern seaboard of the United States, from Spitalfields to Scottish castles, from Bletchley Park to Buchenwald, and from the Vatican to Palestine, Natalie Livingstone follows the extraordinary lives of the Rothschild women from the dawn of the nineteenth century to the early years of the twenty-first.

As Jews in a Christian society and women in a deeply patriarchal family, they were outsiders. Excluded from the family bank, they forged their own distinct dynasty of daughters and nieces, mothers and aunts. They became influential hostesses and talented diplomats, choreographing electoral campaigns, advising prime ministers, advocating for social reform, and trading on the stock exchange. Misfits and conformists, conservatives and idealists, performers and introverts, they mixed with everyone from Queen Victoria to Chaim Weizmann, Rossini to Isaiah Berlin, and the Duke of Wellington to Alec Guinness, as well as with amphetamine-dealers, suffragists and avant-garde artists. Rothschild women helped bring down ghetto walls in early nineteenth-century Frankfurt, inspired some of the most remarkable cultural movements of the Victorian period, and in the mid-twentieth century burst into America, where they patronized Thelonious Monk and drag-raced through Manhattan with Miles Davis.

Absorbing and compulsive, The Women of Rothschild gives voice to the complicated, privileged, and gifted women whose vision and tenacity shaped history.

Publisher: Macmillan
Original Binding: Hardcover with dust jacket
Pages: 480 pages
ISBN-10: 1250280192
Item Weight: 2.6 lbs
Dimensions: 6.6 x 1.3 x 9.6 inches
Customer Reviews: 3 out of 5 stars 501 to 1,000 ratings
"Reads like an epic novel...impressively researched and beautifully written." -The Wall Street Journal

"Commendable [and] well-researched." -The New York Times

"Deeply researched...This is a rich history to dip in and out of-each generation of the tangled family tree provides Livingstone with fascinating women of wealth and influence who found important ways to defy the expectations of their era." - Vogue, "Best Books for Fall 2022"

"Never before have the lives of the family's women been explored in such intelligent, entertaining detail as in Natalie Livingstone's new must read." -Town & Country

"[A] richly textured narrative. Drawing on archives, memoirs, and published sources, [Natalie Livingstone] focuses on the British branch of the family, examining eight generations of Rothschild women whose influence reached into politics, literature, social reform, Zionism, science, and the arts. … An engaging, authoritative, and refreshingly intimate history." -Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"Livingstone's vital and compelling book fills a gap in Jewish and women's history and will appeal to readers of both. The book includes extensive notes, an index, and a very helpful family tree." -Library Journal (starred)

"[A] comprehensive and colorful group biography of the women of the Rothschild dynasty…Livingstone expertly mines diaries, memoirs, and letters for vivid anecdotes…This sparkling history is full of riches." --Publishers Weekly

"Gripping...Livingstone shows that Rothschild women were the velvet gloves guiding the iron fists of their male relatives and far from being mere appendages, they acted as trusted confidants and silent partners." --Hannah Rothschild, author of The Improbability of Love

"Captivating, intimate, dazzling, epic, and revelatory." --Simon Sebag-Montefiore

"This brilliantly researched and scintillatingly written book is proof positive that the female of the Rothschild species were even more fascinating and talented than the males." --Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny

NATALIE LIVINGSTONE was born and raised in London. She graduated with a first class degree in history from Christ's College, Cambridge in 1998. She began her career as a feature writer at the Daily Express and now contributes to Tatler, Harper's Bazaar, US Vogue, Elle, The Times, and The Mail on Sunday. Natalie lives in London with her husband and three children. She is the author of The Mistresses of Cliveden and The Women of Rothschild.