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tuesday's review against another edition
3.0
Would have been 4 stars if not for the narrator in the audiobook
mpop's review against another edition
5.0
This is a fascinating and engaging read that I would especially recommend to anyone with even a vague interest in U.S. history, women's history, the history of sexuality, political history, or law (I'd recommend it to anyone, but that vague interest might inspire them to pick up the book).
Miller provides a lot of context for social norms at the time, which is an incredibly important piece of the story-without those details, it's hard to understand why people might have acted the way they did. It's difficult to write about events that happened long ago without either leaving a lot of blanks or wildly speculating to fill in those blanks. Miller does a great job of being clear about what is based on direct evidence and what's hidden between the lines.
I previously read [b:Anne Orthwood's Bastard: Sex and Law in Early Virginia|1095880|Anne Orthwood's Bastard Sex and Law in Early Virginia|John Ruston Pagan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348249403l/1095880._SY75_.jpg|1082715], which is very dry, but discusses a lot of the legal and social issues that come up in this book at an earlier time in U.S. history. It was informative to have read both-although I'm much more likely to recommend this book.
Miller provides a lot of context for social norms at the time, which is an incredibly important piece of the story-without those details, it's hard to understand why people might have acted the way they did. It's difficult to write about events that happened long ago without either leaving a lot of blanks or wildly speculating to fill in those blanks. Miller does a great job of being clear about what is based on direct evidence and what's hidden between the lines.
I previously read [b:Anne Orthwood's Bastard: Sex and Law in Early Virginia|1095880|Anne Orthwood's Bastard Sex and Law in Early Virginia|John Ruston Pagan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348249403l/1095880._SY75_.jpg|1082715], which is very dry, but discusses a lot of the legal and social issues that come up in this book at an earlier time in U.S. history. It was informative to have read both-although I'm much more likely to recommend this book.
aew325's review against another edition
challenging
informative
tense
slow-paced
4.5
Grover Cleveland was a bad bad person. The chapter on him feels like a detour but Chapter 6 does seem to be making the connection between the two stories more explicit. #JusticeForMariaHalpin
Content Warnings
Moderate: Infidelity, Sexism, and Sexual assault
Minor: Child death
kjgreads2's review against another edition
5.0
"In the end it wasn't one woman who brought him down, it was all of them."
I cannot recommend this audiobook enough, a superbly-told feminist story that challenges the Victorian sexual double standard for women that echoes through society today.
Read for the 2019 Reading Women Challenge #18: A romance or love story.
I cannot recommend this audiobook enough, a superbly-told feminist story that challenges the Victorian sexual double standard for women that echoes through society today.
Read for the 2019 Reading Women Challenge #18: A romance or love story.
tyches_dice's review against another edition
5.0
Moral of the story:
Screw men. Figuratively though. Do not literally screw men. Men are the worst.
(JK Madeline Pollard did not take on an exhausting court case against a powerful man for me to tell women they can’t screw whoever they want to)
(But men are still the worst)
Screw men. Figuratively though. Do not literally screw men. Men are the worst.
(JK Madeline Pollard did not take on an exhausting court case against a powerful man for me to tell women they can’t screw whoever they want to)
(But men are still the worst)
celebrationofbooks's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
3.5
I’d been excited to read Bringing Down the Colonel for quite some time – since the hardcover was first released, I knew I was going to put it forth for voting for Nonfiction Book Club once it was available in paperback. With an expected date in November 2019 for the paperback, it was overwhelming selected by the members of book club, only to be pushed back to March. And then when self-isolation started, we wound up pushing the meeting back a month, to May. When I no longer had a burning desire to read nonfiction.
I try really hard not to read a book to far ahead of when we’re going to discuss it so that, as book club leader, I can be fully present and engaged in the conversation. Which is hard when I read too soon because my memory for books is very short as I read so many of them and often very quickly. But I wanted to try to finish this one because virtual book club has been one of the few social things I’ve done these past few months.
As a student of history, I thought I wouldn’t be so surprised to find society behaving so cyclically. “History repeats itself” is a phrase I’ve heard time and time again from many sources from teachers, to family members, to friends. Few things that happen are truly novel. This isn’t the first pandemic, this isn’t the first racist president, this isn’t the first cold war, this isn’t the first incidence of corruption, etc. And in Bringing Down the Colonel, it wasn’t the first time a man used his gender to screw over (literally) a young woman.
BUT. It was one of the first times that a woman risked her own reputation to bring suit against said man, received the support of other women rather than being shamed, and won her case against him. I could go on and on about the problems with straight white men, protests are currently being held all over the US because of the downright murderous actions of a straight white man in a position of power, but unfortunately that discussion doesn’t relate directly to the suit at hand in Bringing Down the Colonel.
Gender politics are at the core of Bringing Down the Colonel – the positions of men and women in a Victorian society are the base for the conflict central to the story. Patricia Miller does a terrific job of putting the reader right into the Gilded Age and presenting many sides of society, from family life, to opportunities for education, to how the military and the Civil War continued to influence state and national politics.
She even traces sexual history of Americans back to the Puritans days of bundling (Puritans were more open about pre-marrital sex than Victorians, something I didn’t expect), to the sexual offenses of president Grover Cleveland, to how men viewed women’s “availability” for sex based on their marital status and employment situation, and the roles of sex and gender in the women’s suffrage movement.
The one thing that struck us most about the case, was that Madeline, the woman bringing the lawsuit, was not Wonder Woman. She wasn’t particularly likeable and was very morally gray. But she had enough gumption and strength to her voice to be the perfect person to start a movement for change – she wasn’t perfect, pristine, beautiful, or particularly selfless. But she stood up for herself and used her voice, she refused to be silenced.
We had a very lively discussion of this book and while it was all women at the virtual meeting, I would have honestly liked to get a man’s perspective. Now, whether that perspective would have been entirely honest while discussing the book with a group of feminists, I do not now. But we do have members of multiple generations and the discussion of how gender roles have evolved since the 1950s was probably my favorite part of the discussion.
zep's review against another edition
2.0
2.5 stars, for the audiobook version.
The case and scandal the book is about is interesting, but as a book it's somewhat of a dry and distant recitation of facts (and speculation) and press coverage, stretched out for far longer than could hold my interest. I feel like I didn't get any more out of knowing all the tiny little details of the case than I would have from a short story-length summary.
Hearing about the case itself could be viewed as cathartic, but that effect is overshadowed by other facts presented, like that President Cleveland was accused (very credibly, by modern standards) of rape, at a time when his victim (the author of Little Women) had no legal recourse against him. I'm glad to know about that now, but especially in relation to today's politics it hardly makes for a cheerful or cathartic read.
The audiobook narrator puts on a southern accent for all the quotes, and drops her voice for the quotes from men. I found this a bit distracting, and it made everyone, especially the men, sound the same. I got used to it after a while, but then also got increasingly irritated by the fact that she always puts the same inflection on certain frequent words (wash-ing-ton, etc). I'm really picky about audiobooks, though; I imagine it'll work well enough for many people.
The case and scandal the book is about is interesting, but as a book it's somewhat of a dry and distant recitation of facts (and speculation) and press coverage, stretched out for far longer than could hold my interest. I feel like I didn't get any more out of knowing all the tiny little details of the case than I would have from a short story-length summary.
Hearing about the case itself could be viewed as cathartic, but that effect is overshadowed by other facts presented, like that President Cleveland was accused (very credibly, by modern standards) of rape, at a time when his victim (the author of Little Women) had no legal recourse against him. I'm glad to know about that now, but especially in relation to today's politics it hardly makes for a cheerful or cathartic read.
The audiobook narrator puts on a southern accent for all the quotes, and drops her voice for the quotes from men. I found this a bit distracting, and it made everyone, especially the men, sound the same. I got used to it after a while, but then also got increasingly irritated by the fact that she always puts the same inflection on certain frequent words (wash-ing-ton, etc). I'm really picky about audiobooks, though; I imagine it'll work well enough for many people.
libraryneenja's review against another edition
5.0
What a great book! I went into it figuring it would have a pretty narrow focus, one on the specific trial in question and would provide background as needed. Maybe not a high expectation but it's what I had. Books like this seem to be hit or miss. This one was a hit. There was important background/history not just on the individuals involved, but also on people generally involved, the era, how the social norms got there, other incidents that were similar but went very poorly for the women involved, and more. Reading not just about this trial but about what women were dealing with, the expectations placed on them compared to those placed on men, how this incident provided a door for some women to become politically active when they would never have done so otherwise. I also appreciated the information on what happened to the main players afterwards. How did their lives go? This was pretty wonderful.
bookedinthebayou's review against another edition
3.0
A slow burn but a great depiction of a monumental moment in Women’s history
weaverwrites's review against another edition
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexism
Minor: Sexual violence