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A review by sdbecque
Bringing Down the Colonel: A Sex Scandal of the Gilded Age, and the Powerless Woman Who Took on Washington by Patricia Miller
4.0
“The world seemed to be shifting under his feet, as were ideas about who was fit to sit in judgment of whom.” - Patricia Miller, Bringing Down the Colonel
If you’ve been following along, you’ve probably seen this book appear on my various TBR pictures since December. I’ve been wanting to read it since I heard it discussed on @bookriot ’s non-fiction podcast, For Real, and because it was the @belletrist book of the month in November, but after a wait to get the library book, it kept getting pushed down on my TBR.
I finally tackled it, taking it with me to a Pi Phi event in St. Louis two weekends ago, which of course, was a rookie mistake. I never get much reading down at Pi Phi events, there’s no time! I think I read a total of 10 sleepy pages over the course of two nights and took this photo of it in front of the Arch.
As I mentioned on Saturday, there’s a lot to keep track of in this book, but the main story revolves around Madeline Pollard who sued Col. W.C.P. Breckinridge, a five-term House representative from Kentucky, for breach of promise to marry. There’s a lot of interesting history and explanation here, including an explanation of how, for the Puritans, for example, out of wedlock babies weren’t really such a big deal even though we tend to think of them having scarlet letter type shame. Normally these lawsuits didn’t go well for the women, but Pollard had some factors on her side. It’s definitely an interesting an relevant read!
If you’ve been following along, you’ve probably seen this book appear on my various TBR pictures since December. I’ve been wanting to read it since I heard it discussed on @bookriot ’s non-fiction podcast, For Real, and because it was the @belletrist book of the month in November, but after a wait to get the library book, it kept getting pushed down on my TBR.
I finally tackled it, taking it with me to a Pi Phi event in St. Louis two weekends ago, which of course, was a rookie mistake. I never get much reading down at Pi Phi events, there’s no time! I think I read a total of 10 sleepy pages over the course of two nights and took this photo of it in front of the Arch.
As I mentioned on Saturday, there’s a lot to keep track of in this book, but the main story revolves around Madeline Pollard who sued Col. W.C.P. Breckinridge, a five-term House representative from Kentucky, for breach of promise to marry. There’s a lot of interesting history and explanation here, including an explanation of how, for the Puritans, for example, out of wedlock babies weren’t really such a big deal even though we tend to think of them having scarlet letter type shame. Normally these lawsuits didn’t go well for the women, but Pollard had some factors on her side. It’s definitely an interesting an relevant read!