America's Mistress. Eartha Kitt, Her Life And Times

Cover Type: Hardcover
Book Condition: Good
Jacket Condition: Good
Publisher: Quercus
Publisher Place: London
Publisher Year: 2013
Edition: First Edition

Description: 336 pages. Book and Jacket are both in Good condition. There is some light shelf and reading wear, but still a presentable copy.

Publishers Description: The most exciting woman in the world Orson WellesA sadistic nymphomaniac The CIAEartha Kitt was a skinny, mixed-race woman with an odd, angular face, who seduced fifties white America into thinking that she was, in the words of Orson Welles, the most exciting woman in the world. She could count Marilyn Monroe, T.S. Eliot, Prince Philip and Albert Einstein among her friends and admirers, and was almost able to forget she had once been a poor black girl from the Deep South.But her new persona was also a prison from which she found it impossible to escape. John L. Williams moving and unsettling biography shows a star adrift in a bewildering new America torn apart by the Civil Rights movement. Shunned by many of her former friends, shocked by her countrys insiduous racism, and with a perilously fragile sense of her own identity, Eartha Kitt would pay the price that came from trying to be Americas mistress.John L. Williams moving and unsettling biography is at once a profound exploration of the destructive effects of fame and prejudice, and also an unforgettable portrait of an enchanting, unpredictable figure who was once, in the words of Orson Welles, the most exciting woman in the world.

ISBN: 9780857385758