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Dispatches from the Gilded Age: A Few More Thoughts on Interesting People, Far-Flung Places, and the Joys of Southern Comforts
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About This Book
Dispatches from the Gilded Age is a collection of essays by Julia Reed, one of America's greatest chroniclers. In the middle of the night on March 11, 1980, the phone rang in Julia Reed's Georgetown dorm. It was her boss at Newsweek, where she was an intern. He told her to get in her car and drive to her alma mater, the Madeira School. Her former headmistress, Jean Harris, had just shot Dr. Herman Tarnower, The Scarsdale Diet Doctor. Julia didn't flinch. She dressed, drove to Madeira, got the story, and her first byline and the new American Gilded Age was off and running. The end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first was a time in which the high and the low bubbled furiously together and Julia was there with her sharp eye, keen wit, and uproariously clear-eyed way of seeing the world to chronicle this truly spectacular era. Dispatches from the Gilded Age is Julia at her best as she profiles Andre Leon Talley, Sister Helen Prejean, President George and Laura Bush, Madeleine Albright, and others. Readers will travel to Africa and Cuba with Julia, dine at Le Bernardin, savor steaks at Doe's Eat Place, consider the fashions of the day, get the recipes for her hot cheese olives and end up with the ride of their lives through Julia's beloved South. With a foreword by Roy Blount, Jr. and edited by Julia's longtime assistant, Everett Bexley.
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Reviews
"A selection of sparkling essays by a great Southern wit, foodie, fashionista, and prose stylist....Her decision not to mention her illness in this or any other essay that appeared in her long-running column in Garden and Gun recalls Nora Ephron, another seemingly candid but actually quite reserved personal essayist always ready with the bright, deflecting wisecrack...Similarly poignant are essays that touch on Reed's friendship with André Leon Talley, the late Vogue editor at large and kindred spirit...There is life after death—at least for an essayist with this much verve on the page."
"Garden & Gun columnist Reed, who died in 2020, profiles activists and artists, travels to exotic locales, and offers tart advice on food and fashion in this colorful essay collection spanning her 40-year career...Sharp and fearless, these essays are a fitting tribute to Reed's life and career."
"Edited with obvious affection by her longtime assistant, Everett Bexley, this book seems intended as a toast to Reed, a beloved bon vivant and contributor to many publications, most recently Garden & Gun, where her reputation as the Nora Ephron of the South was cemented with a column, blog posts and podcasts delivered in her Scotch-soaked voice...But sadly, 'Dispatches From the Gilded Age' is only funny in patches, and goes on quite a bit longer than necessary...It's less like a toast and more like one of those beribboned, overstuffed goody bags that get handed out at the end of certain parties (not Reed's, where the only thing you walked away with, judging by her advice on hostessing, was the promise of a major hangover)...You're pleased to get the bag, and there might be a thing or two in there you want, but there's also plenty that you're going to crumple up and throw away."
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