{"product_id":"difficult-woman-book-alice-kessler-harris-9781596913639","title":"A Difficult Woman","description":"Lillian Hellman was a giant of twentieth-century letters and a groundbreaking figure as one of the most successful female playwrights on Broadway. Yet the author of The Little Foxes and Toys in the Attic is today remembered more as a toxic, bitter survivor and literary fabulist, the woman of whom Mary McCarthy said, \"Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and' and ‘the.'\" In A Difficult Woman, renowned historian Alice  Kessler-Harris undertakes a feat few would dare to attempt: a reclamation of a combative, controversial woman who straddled so many political and cultural fault lines of her time.  Kessler-Harris renders Hellman's feisty wit and personality in all of its contradictions: as a non-Jewish Jew, a displaced Southerner, a passionate political voice without a party, an artist immersed in commerce, a sexually free woman who scorned much of the women's movement, a loyal friend whose trust was often betrayed, and a writer of memoirs who repeatedly questioned the possibility of achieving truth and doubted her memory.  Hellman was a writer whose plays spoke the language of morality yet whose achievements foundered on accusations of mendacity. Above all else, she was a woman who made her way in a man's world. Kessler-Harris has crafted a nuanced life of Hellman, empathetic yet unsparing, that situates her in the varied contexts in which she moved, from New Orleans to Broadway to the hearing room of HUAC. A Difficut Woman is a major work of literary and intellectual history. This will be one of the most reviewed, and most acclaimed, books of 2012.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49552561930513,"sku":"GOR004878717","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50096624828689,"sku":"CIN1596913630G","price":6.86,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51329839169809,"sku":"CIN1596913630VG","price":6.86,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1596913630.jpg?v=1751375160","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/products\/difficult-woman-book-alice-kessler-harris-9781596913639","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}