Dangerous Ambition: Dorothy Thompson and Rebecca West : New Women in Search of Love and Power

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Ballantine Books, 2011 - 493 pagine
Born in the 1890s on opposite sides of the Atlantic, friends for more than forty years, Dorothy Thompson and Rebecca West lived strikingly parallel lives that placed them at the center of the social and historical upheavals of the twentieth century. In "Dangerous Ambition, " Susan Hertog chronicles the separate but intertwined journeys of these two remarkable women writers, who achieved unprecedented fame and influence at tremendous personal cost.
American Dorothy Thompson was the first female head of a European news bureau, a columnist and commentator with a tremendous following whom "Time" magazine once ranked alongside Eleanor Roosevelt as the most influential woman in America. Rebecca West, an Englishwoman at home wherever genius was spoken, blazed a trail for herself as a journalist, literary critic, novelist, and historian. In a prefeminist era when speaking truth to power could get anyone--of either gender--ostracized, blacklisted, or worse, these two smart, self-made women were among the first to warn the world about the dangers posed by fascism, communism, and appeasement.
But there was a price to be paid, Hertog shows, for any woman aspiring to such greatness. As much as they sought voice and power in the public forum of opinion and ideas, and the independence of mind and money that came with them, Thompson and West craved the comforts of marriage and home. Torn between convention and the opportunities of the new postwar global world, they were drawn to men who were as ambitious and hungry for love as themselves: Thompson to the brilliant, volatile, and alcoholic Nobel Prize winner Sinclair Lewis; West to her longtime lover H. G. Wells, the lusty literary eminence whose sexual and emotional demands doomed any chance they may have had at love. Tragically, both arrangements produced troubled sons, whose anger and jealousy at their mothers' iconic fame eroded their sense of personal success.
Brimming with fresh insights obtained from previously sealed archives, this penetrating dual biography is a story of twinned lives caught up in the crosscurrents of world events and affairs of the heart--and of the unique trans-Atlantic friendship forged by two of the most creative and complex women of their time.

Dall'interno del libro

Sommario

Gemini
3
Becoming Rebecca
19
Becoming Dorothy
50
The Trinity
76
Resurrection
96
Descent
113
Renaissance
130
A Cold Wind
144
Fractured
261
The Kampf
289
No Exit
323
Descent to Glory
358
Obsession
391
EPILOGUE
427
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
439
NOTES
443

A Good Wife
159
The Riddle of the Universe
173
The Faithful Warrior
190
Bloodlust
219
God Lust
238
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
469
CREDITS
479
INDEX
481
Copyright

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Informazioni sull'autore (2011)

Susan Hertog was born in New York City and graduated from Hunter College. After earning her M.F.A. from Columbia University, she became a freelance journalist and photographer. She is the author of one previous book, "Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her Life." She lives in Manhattan with her family.

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