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A review by shoosha
Bringing Down the Colonel: A Sex Scandal of the Gilded Age, and the Powerless Woman Who Took on Washington by Patricia Miller
3.0
It's the 1890s and the US is experiencing a major cultural shift. Women are leaving domestic spheres in search of work, providing for families decimated after the civil war. This new autonomy reveals the strong contrast of the moral divide in the culture. Men have mistresses without repercussions, while women become 'ruined'. Things are changing and this book takes us through a specific court case that is the stone cast that creates the ripples to suffrage and greater equality between the sexes.
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I enjoyed this enough to want to finish it, however I think that it reiterates a lot of ground and can read more like a historical thesis than a non fiction story. When Patricia pulls back and looks at where this court case fits in the historical lineage is when the book is strongest.
Women are the center of this story and you learn about three very different women in very different situations that collide in this case. I only wish it could have better built a narrative around these women to connect them to us. As it is, you get a lot of factual information without a lot of breath or air in the humans she is discussing.
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If you are interested in women studies, times of upheaval, cultural shifts in US history, I highly recommend it. .
...
I enjoyed this enough to want to finish it, however I think that it reiterates a lot of ground and can read more like a historical thesis than a non fiction story. When Patricia pulls back and looks at where this court case fits in the historical lineage is when the book is strongest.
Women are the center of this story and you learn about three very different women in very different situations that collide in this case. I only wish it could have better built a narrative around these women to connect them to us. As it is, you get a lot of factual information without a lot of breath or air in the humans she is discussing.
...
If you are interested in women studies, times of upheaval, cultural shifts in US history, I highly recommend it. .