Books by Martha Sandweiss
“The central character is a white man named Clarence King who was born to wealth and privilege. He was one of the famous figures of the Gilded Age, an explorer, a scientist, and a bestselling author. He knew everybody from the top of society to the bottom. King was known among his friends as a bachelor who had romantic liaisons with a wide range of women. What almost no one knows is that King married Ada Copeland, a Black woman who was born into slavery in Georgia. Ada believed Clarence to be an African American Pullman porter named James Todd, whose frequent absences were explained by his railroad work. So King, a patrician white public figure, privately passed as Black and has five mixed race children. The book revolves around their incredibly complicated life together. The story is fascinating, the characters are fascinating” Read more...
The best books on The Gilded Age
Richard White, Historian
Interviews where books by Martha Sandweiss were recommended
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1
The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896
by Richard White -
2
Equality: An American Dilemma, 1866-1896
by Charles Postel -
3
A Hazard of New Fortunes
by William Dean Howells -
4
Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line
by Martha Sandweiss -
5
The Search for Order, 1877-1920
by Robert Wiebe
The best books on The Gilded Age, recommended by Richard White
The best books on The Gilded Age, recommended by Richard White
America’s Gilded Age, roughly from the end of the Civil War to the First World War, saw the United States go from being a rural, agricultural society to an urban and industrial one. National wealth soared and disparities between rich and poor exploded. Here, historian Richard White talks about how the Gilded Age transformed America and picks out some parallels with our own age that are not hard to see.
