American Scoundrel by Thomas Keneally

American Scoundrel by Thomas Keneally

On the last, cold Sunday of February 1859, Daniel Sickles shot his wife s lover in Washington s Lafayette Square, just across from the White House this is the story of that killing and its repercussions.

Thomas Keneally brilliantly recreates an extraordinary period, when women were punished for violating codes of society that did not bind men. And the caddish, good-looking Dan Sickles personifies the extremes of the era: as a womaniser, he introduced his favourite madam to Queen Victoria while his wife stayed at home; as minister to Spain, he began an affair with the queen while courting one of her ladies in waiting; and in his later years, he installed his housekeeper as his mistress while his second wife took up residence nearby.

The brio with which Thomas Keneally tells the tale is equal to the pace and bravado of Sickles life. But, more than this, American Scoundrel is the lens through which the reader can view history at a time when America was being torn apart.

A great piece of storytelling Guardian

A fascinating book informative and entertaining Daily Telegraph

This has a thriller-ish propulsion a highly readable book Sunday Express

Rosie Scott has published six novels and a collection each of short stories, poems and essays. She and Thomas Keneally co-edited a PEN anthology of writers in detention, earning them a nomination for the Human Rights Medal and helping to gain PEN the Community Human Rights Award. Her novel Faith Singer was on the list of 50 Essential Reads by Contemporary Authors compiled by the Orange Prize committee, the Guardian and the Hay Festival. Thomas Keneally is a novelist, playwright, and nonfiction author who is best-known for the Booker Prize-winning novel Schindler's Ark, which was adapted into the movie Schindler's List. His other titles include the Penguin Lives biography Abraham Lincoln, American Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles, and A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780385501392
ISBN 10	0385501390
Title	American Scoundrel
Author	Thomas Keneally
Condition	Unavailable
Publisher	Nan A. Talese
Year published	2002-04-09
Number of pages	397
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable