Alice James has jumped a cross-country train to escape from an unknown pursuer. Fighting off searing pain and feverish hallucinations, her Pullman porter insists she come to The Paragon Hotel to hide while she recuperates. This seems like a reasonable enough arrangement. But this is the 1920s, and Alice is white and The Paragon is only for blacks.
Two books devoted to that volatile and endlessly fascinating era… Bohemians, Bootleggers, Flappers & Swells Edited by Graydon Carter Drawing from the best of the Vanity Fair archive, this selection of essays, poems, stories and columns from the early days are a looking glass into the era. Beginning with the days of WWI and into the…
For this one, you have to think back, imagine a time when Victorian mores hadn’t yet lost their grip. For women, hair was still worn long (as were skirts – no pants), yet they were about to win the right to vote. There was a constant tug between the past and the future. It must…
I adore this book. It’s a completely individual way to tell a story. It’s a novel masquerading as a scrapbook — or perhaps it’s the other way around. Author Caroline Preston says of taking on this project, “I spent an unhealthy portion of my childhood rooting around in the boiling-or-freezing attic of my parent’s house…