maryk8 's review for:

The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post by Allison Pataki

4.0

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This book was my annual pick for my neighborhood book club. I started my selection process by looking at 4-star books I had on my to-read list. With tales of parties, jewels, and travels, this looked like a fun book for everyone to read during the holidays. At first, when I saw the Post name I thought it was about the family of Emily Post, the manners lady, but after some additional research I discovered that it was the Post cereal family and that she was the first woman to own a major corporation. I have read many biographies of male tycoons - Steve Jobs, Andrew Carnegie, Elon Musk, Henry Ford, Frank Lloyd Wright, to name a few, and these men all turned out to be jerks (keeping the wording family friendly!). I wanted to know if a woman could do better.

I was since Mar-a-Largo has been in the news so much lately, I was intrigued by the fact that she built it and donated it to the US government to be a Winter White House, but that fell through and then it wound up being a presidential home after all.

Since Marjorie lived to be almost 90, the story spans many decades of American history. She also lived a very full life of travel, building estates, business, and art collecting, not to mention 4 marriages. So, there is plenty of material for many books. I, as well as many of the people in my book club, took many breaks from reading the book to Google things for more information.

This book is a good read for those interested in woman's history and American history, it introduces many topics that aren't covered in history class and sparks curiosity to learn more about them.