American Lady
The Life of Susan Mary Alsop
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4.1 • 24 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
The fascinating story of one of the grand dames of Georgetown society and a true Washington insider
Henry Kissinger once remarked that more agreements were concluded in the living room of Susan Mary Alsop than in the White House. A descendent of Founding Father John Jay, Susan Mary was an American aristocrat whose first marriage gave her full access to post-war diplomatic social life in Paris. There, her circle of friends included Winston Churchill, Isaiah Berlin, Evelyn Waugh, and Christian Dior, among other luminaries, and she had a passionate love affair with British ambassador Duff Cooper. During the golden years of John F. Kennedy’s presidency—after she had married the powerful journalist Joe Alsop—her Washington home was a gathering place for everyone of importance, including Katharine Graham, Robert McNamara, and Henry Kissinger. Dubbed “the second lady of Camelot,” she hosted dinner parties that were the epitome of political power and social arrival, bringing together the movers and shakers not just of the United States, but of the world. Featuring an introduction by Susan Mary Alsop’s goddaughter Frances FitzGerald, American Lady is a fascinating chronicle of a woman who witnessed, as Nancy Mitford once said, “history on the boil.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A descendant of founding father John Jay and magnate John Jacob Astor, Susan Mary Jay (1918 2004) grew up a privileged member of the moneyed and connected Eastern Establishment, where her unloving mother and only sister's teenage death cast a long shadow. When her marriage to diplomat Bill Patten brought her to Paris in 1945, she blossomed into a beguiling, inquisitive hostess, hobnobbing with the likes of Evelyn Waugh, Winston Churchill, and the duke and duchess of Windsor. She also fell madly in love with Duff Cooper, the womanizing British ambassador, continuing their long affair even after giving birth to a son that Cooper refused to acknowledge. After Patten's death, Susan Mary married his Harvard chum, the famous political journalist Joe Alsop, aware that Alsop was a closeted homosexual. At this point one of Washington's most sought-after hostesses, she split amicably from Alsop in 1974, launching a successful new career as an author. In 1995, under alcoholism treatment forced upon her by her family, she spitefully revealed to her son his father's true identity. Despite French biographer de Margerie's use of some 500 love letters to Cooper, Susan Mary, with her "unrelenting self-control," remains mostly inscrutable, though this manages to be an engrossing, perceptive, and nuanced portrait of a celebrated socialite who once knew everyone worth knowing.
