Esteemed historian Ian Buruma turns his attention to a happy marriage in his elegant new book, Their Promised Land: My Grandparents in Love and War. While his grandparents might seem a more limited subject than his recent Year Zero: A History of 1945, this family love story is deeply intertwined with history. Using their correspondence during both the First and Second World Wars as his primary source, Buruma crafts a finely observed portrait of an assimilated Jewish family in England between the wars.

In Buruma’s telling, Winifred and Bernard Schlesinger were “more English than the English.” Of German-Jewish origin, they came from distinguished, upper-middle-class families who prized education and classical music. Although they were not officially engaged until 1922, their mutual affection is clear from letters written as early as 1915. Buruma humorously depicts the strain of the long engagement on their powers of patience; once they were finally married in 1925, they joked of having to consult Roman frescoes for advice on sex.

Despite their warm domestic life and five children (including film director John Schlesinger), the family’s encounters with anti-Semitism darken the peace and milieu in which they live. Bernard, a doctor, found himself blackballed from certain medical institutions; his frustration at this routine discrimination led to the most heroic act of the Schlesingers’ marriage. In 1938, the family helped 12 child refugees leave Nazi Germany and kept them safe in England. One of the most moving moments in the book occurs when Buruma names “the Twelve,” many of whom are still living today.

This article was originally published in the January 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Robert Lowell was considered by many to be the English-speaking world’s pre-eminent poet after the Second World War. In 1946, when he was barely 30 years old, he received the Pulitzer Prize for his second poetry collection, Lord Weary’s Castle. He received a second Pulitzer for The Dolphin in 1973, and many other awards followed until his death in 1977. He was charming, brilliant in literary subjects, admired by both men and women, and a good friend to both. Born into a prominent Massachusetts family, he was charismatic, ruggedly handsome and an extraordinary mix of New York liberal and Southern conservative. Though he had many Jewish ancestors, Lowell was raised Episcopalian and converted to Catholicism. The very large collection of his letters shows he was one of the central literary figures of his time.

Although Lowell was committed to a lifetime of writing poetry, there was another aspect of his life that caused much disruption for himself and others. He was manic-depressive, and his illness provided experiences that sometimes appeared in his work. Between 1945 and 1976 he suffered at least 16 mental breakdowns. Over the years he was confined in five different countries and 15 psychiatric hospitals and clinics. Some believe his best writing came when he was entering or emerging from his illness. A positive aspect of his condition was that it gave him greater compassion for the suffering of others.  

In a compelling and insightful new book that draws in part on several previously unpublished sources, Robert Lowell in Love, biographer and literary scholar Jeffrey Meyers explores a central aspect of Lowell’s life and art: “As compensation for his mania, Lowell needed women and loved the idea of falling in love, and each affair became an intense dramatic episode. His impressive achievements came at great cost to himself as well as to the women who were attracted to his intellect, generosity, and charismatic personality. This book tells the stories of the women who inspired his poetry and were at the emotional and aesthetic center of his life.” 

Lowell is widely identified with the term “confessional” poetry, a term he did not like. He always insisted that his so-called confessional poems were in significant ways invented. However, since some of his poetry dramatized his own emotional experiences, the women in his life, often part of a small literary circle where many knew the individuals involved, had to suffer again when his poems were published.

It is crucial to understand that Lowell’s parents were particularly unsuited to each other. Neither knew how to relate to their gifted only child. In his last book, Day by Day, published in 1977, Lowell’s poem “Unwanted,” dealt with his psychological wound from being the unwanted son of a mother trapped in an unwanted marriage. Lowell learned this early on, and it was something he had to bear until his death. His mental illness apparently developed, at least in part, because of his relationship with his volatile and unstable mother. 

Meyers offers an overview of Lowell’s early life, including his years at Kenyon College where he demonstrated his commitment to a life of poetry by studying with the influential poet/critic John Crowe Ransom and became good friends with other literary figures. Meyers then focuses on Lowell’s three wives, Jean Stafford, Elizabeth Hardwick and Caroline Blackwood; his close women friends such as the highly regarded poet Elizabeth Bishop; and his best known students, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. Hardwick, a literary critic and novelist, was a firm anchor as his second wife between two turbulent marriages to emotionally unstable women, and Meyers characterizes her as the tragic heroine of Lowell’s life. 

Meyers considers the “heart” of his book the section on nine of Lowell’s many lovers, with whom he was able to conduct extensive interviews. Lowell regarded each new romance as permanent, which made the ending of these relationships devastating to the women involved. Recognizing this, Lowell tried to keep in touch with his lovers, to check on their well-being. But he did confess, “Sometimes I think I am the enemy of womankind.” Surprisingly, few of the women wanted to leave him, even after he had treated them irresponsibly. When he died, Lowell was still married to Blackwood, although he had moved from England back to New York to live with Hardwick. The latter even had Blackwood stay with her in the days leading up to his funeral.

This absorbing biography has many riches, including perceptive readings of some of Lowell’s poetry, an appendix that reveals how Meyers was able to locate nine of Lowell’s identifiable romantic interests, and another appendix that lists significant literary references and allusions that did not make it into Lowell’s Collected Poems.

Jack London lived during America’s first Gilded Age from the late 1800s through the early 1900s. Readers of his very popular books (he was the first U.S. author to make more than a million dollars) were entertained by stories about dogs and wolves and gold miners and ships and cannibals. At the same time, London was educating the public about serious societal problems that required fundamental reform. He understood that fiction could appeal to the heart as well as the mind and that public empathy was crucial before significant social, economic and political change could take place. As an avowed socialist for many years (he eventually left the party) he was also a prolific producer of nonfiction and joined with others in advocating such reforms as workplace safety and better working conditions for adults and children, changes in the seriously flawed justice system, wealth inequality, sustainable agriculture, conservation and more.

In her enlightening and beautifully written reappraisal of London’s life and work, Jack London: A Writer’s Fight for a Better America, Cecelia Tichi, professor of English and American Studies at Vanderbilt, demonstrates that the author was a great American public intellectual. His deep research on specific problems and his literary skill enabled him to reach a vast and extraordinarily diverse readership at a time when the printed word, through magazines and books, was the popular medium of communication.

London had an impoverished childhood and worked at a series of odd jobs to help his struggling family. He learned first hand or saw many of the concerns he would later address in his writing. His schooling was mostly self-guided and included just one undergraduate semester at the University of California. But he was an omnivorous reader, interested in a wide range of subjects, and significantly helped by two librarians. His mother was not warm and affectionate toward him but, importantly, she encouraged his ambition to become a successful writer. When he began to enjoy financial security, he was keenly aware he was part of the very culture he hoped to reform; his wealth came from an economic system he both needed and loathed.

In a period that was appropriately labeled the era of Big Business, it was not tycoons’ wealth that bothered him but their abysmal failure at managing the social world they created. London said in 1914, “If, just by wishing, I could change America and Americans in one way I would change the economic organization so that true opportunity would obtain; and service, instead of profits, would be the idea, the ideal, and the ambition animating every citizen.”

London’s stint as a war correspondent covering the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 and his work reporting on the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 made a lasting impact on him. Although he did not accept another wartime assignment until 1914, when he covered the U.S. intervention in the Mexican Revolution, he was eager to tell the public, Tichi writes, “directly or subtly, flagrantly or in nuance—that war and its corollary, empire, were inglorious, wasteful, corruptive, and inhumane.”

This book vividly explores London’s life and times, including the development of corporate public relations to oppose causes he advocated. There are expert readings of his works which show how he combined marketable writing with messages for reform. Tichi’s important work offers a new way to see an author we may have thought we knew well. 

As the popularity of the movie Midnight in Paris demonstrated, tales of the 1920s Lost Generation—Scott, Zelda and the gang—have an enduring appeal. That “lost generation” nickname was first used by Ernest Hemingway, and his early novels and posthumously published memoir, A Moveable Feast, are among its best depictions.

A.E. Hotchner’s Hemingway in Love is a poignant postscript to A Moveable Feast, particularly to Hemingway’s bittersweet last chapter. Hotchner, now 95, was Hemingway’s younger friend and Boswell, notebook at the ready, accompanying Papa to all the iconic haunts: Venice, Paris, Pamplona, Key West. He wrote a full biography of his mentor soon after Hemingway’s suicide. In this late memoir, Hotchner wants finally to give Hemingway his say about his one true love: Hadley, his first wife, the Paris wife.

This book is Hotchner’s riposte to critics who believe the first edition of A Moveable Feast was overedited by Hemingway’s fourth wife, Mary, in a way that was unfair to wife no. 2, Pauline. Quite the contrary, Hotchner says. In private conversation, Hemingway said that leaving Hadley for Pauline was the worst decision of his life, and had turned him in the wrong direction, as an artist and a man.

The outlines of the story are familiar, but Hotchner provides new detail, including the wrenching “100 days” that Hadley insisted on as a trial separation. During that miserable time, Hemingway lost many of his Paris friends, who to his apparent surprise hadn’t liked being turned into fictional characters. 

This is a book of elegiac charm, about a great writer’s regrets. It’s framed at beginning and end by Hotchner’s heartbreaking visit to his close friend in a psychiatric hospital, not long before he shot himself. Hotchner likes to think he’s now with Hadley.

This article was originally published in the November 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

A lasting impression after reading Custer’s Trials is that George Armstrong Custer was a man who always seemed to be in the right place at the right time—until he died being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Pulitzer Prize winner T.J. Stiles (The First Tycoon) chronicles Custer’s knack for being present at significant historic events and around remarkable historical figures. Bold, ambitious and dashing, Custer commanded attention. He joined the Union cavalry at the onset of the Civil War and was present at the First Battle of Bull Run. Later, upon delivering a message to Union headquarters, he met General George B. McClellan and joined his staff. Custer went on to serve in many major battles, including Antietam and Gettysburg, and was present at Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.

Not bad for a guy who graduated last in his class at West Point.

He might have retired to a prosperous business career, but the pulse of glory still circulated in Custer’s veins. So he signed on with General Philip Sheridan and took part in the American Indian Wars. That led to his last meeting with a famous man, Crazy Horse, who led his Lakota warriors in the destruction of Custer and his troops at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

In writing Custer’s Trials, Stiles presents a much fuller picture of the tragic figure many of us know. He shows a Custer who came from a simple farming family and suggests that those humble roots drove him to take risks in the pursuit of fame and fortune. While Custer remains a controversial figure for his violent treatment of Native Americans, Custer’s Trials masterfully adds dimension to his life, helping us better understand the man behind the legend.

This article was originally published in the November 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Now that anyone with a Facebook page and an opinion can be a political pundit, it’s hard to believe there was a time—and not that long ago—when a newspaper columnist could wield real political power. Mary McGrory did for nearly half a century. She entered the news business as a book reviewer but switched to politics in 1954 after her editor at the Washington Star assigned her to cover the Army-McCarthy hearings—not just as a reporter but as a reporter who was “opinionated.”

“Mary, for good and bad, was one of the important forerunners in the trend of newspapers blurring the line between hard reporting and commentary,” writes biographer John Norris. In that capacity, she covered every presidential campaign and administration from the last term of Dwight Eisenhower through the first term of George W. Bush. Generally leaning Democratic—but not uncritically so—she became an enthusiast for such political progressives as Adlai Stevenson, John F. Kennedy (whom she once dated), Eugene McCarthy and Mario Cuomo. She was ambivalent about Lyndon Johnson (who once came to her home—Secret Service in tow—aiming to seduce her), but she persistently opposed him on the Vietnam War. Her columns were syndicated in 1960, and after the Star closed in 1981, she spent the rest of her career at the Washington Post.

McGrory became so influential—she would win a Pulitzer in 1975—that she regularly hosted senators, Supreme Court justices and other bigwigs at her home. Richard Nixon thought her sufficiently dangerous to include her on his enemies list. The downside of being such an insider, Norris notes, was that she “was more interested in capturing the character of politicians on the page than trading her access for exclusives.” Little wonder, then, that it took two relative outsiders—Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, her fellow reporters at the Post—to dig out and write the stories that would topple Nixon. Norris says McGrory regarded the Watergate expose as one of the greatest feats of modern journalism. She died in 2004 at the age of 85. 

Of all the tragedies associated with the Kennedy family, the story of Rosemary Kennedy is among the saddest—and least known. It lasted a lifetime and played out virtually in secret, as opposed to the assassinations and plane crashes that commanded 72-point headlines and seem frozen in time.

Born in 1918, one of Joe and Rose Kennedy’s nine children and their first daughter after sons Joe Jr. and Jack (later President John F. Kennedy), Rosemary was intellectually disabled from birth and experienced mood swings. In 1941, she underwent a frontal lobotomy—arranged by Joe—that went wrong and left her in a drastically reduced mental state. She lived out her years at an institution, dying in 2005.

Kate Clifford Larson’s account of Rosemary’s life, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter, uses new sources, including diaries, letters and interviews, and makes for fascinating but heartbreaking reading. It’s clear that the family coping strategy consisted of equal parts secrecy and denial, with Rosemary frequently hidden away or left behind—literally and figuratively.

Larson also skillfully weaves a Kennedy family history into Rosemary, detailing Joe and Rose’s courtship, Joe’s political ambitions for his sons and giving glimpses into the life stories of all nine children. 

The reader is left to wonder: How did the beaming young woman on the book’s cover, who was presented at Court to the king and queen of England, become the physically twisted, essentially mute woman institutionalized while still in her 20s? And what if she had been born later, when medical advances could have controlled her mood swings? Most poignantly of all: What if she had been born into a family that was prepared to accept her?

Even as Rosemary ends on a redemptive note for the Kennedys, these are questions that will haunt the reader long after the last page is turned.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Kate Clifford Larson about Rosemary.
 

This article was originally published in the October 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Henry Kissinger is one of the most controversial statesmen in American history. Some regard him as the country’s greatest strategic foreign relations thinker, while others describe him as conspiratorial or as a war criminal. Noted Harvard historian Niall Ferguson tells the first part of Kissinger’s story in great detail in Kissinger: 1923-1968: The Idealist, the first of a projected two-volume biography. His research included access to previously private papers, documents from more than 100 archives and many interviews with his subject’s former colleagues, friends and foes, as well as lengthy sessions with Kissinger himself. All of this will not end controversy, however, and may even provoke it, since Kissinger suggested to Ferguson that he write the biography. 

Kissinger left Germany with his family in 1938. At least 13 members of his family were killed in the Holocaust, with the actual number probably closer to 30. Despite this, he has always strongly denied that the Holocaust was crucial to his development. More important was his return to Germany as a private in the U.S. Army. He led a team responsible for historical research and psychology, in an effort to prevent sabotage and to identify ardent Nazis. 

Kissinger has said that Fritz Kraemer, a fellow soldier, was “the greatest single influence on my formative years.” Kraemer, also born in Germany, was a highly educated conservative whose training was in international law, and he generated Kissinger’s systematic interest in history. Later, at Harvard, William Elliott encouraged him and demonstrated that a professor could also be a political actor.

Ferguson offers a rich exploration of the interplay among Kissinger’s study, his own writings and his experience. He is often identified as a “realist,” whose primary influences were Metternich, Bismarck and Machiavelli, a label he rejects. Instead, he says the work of the Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant has meant the most to him. 

Two subjects in Kissinger are most likely to generate strong reactions. The first is that as early as 1965, Kissinger believed that the war in Vietnam could not be won by military means but could be ended only by negotiation. Why then did it take eight more years to reach an agreement? The second is Kissinger’s alleged role in a conspiracy to leak information from the Paris Peace Talks to the 1968 presidential campaign of Richard Nixon. Ferguson points out numerous weaknesses in the arguments that such leaks took place. He does say, however, that Kissinger might have destroyed or failed to record evidence of his activities in Paris.

Whatever one thinks of Kissinger or whether one agrees with Ferguson’s assessments of people and events, this magisterial work should be required reading for anyone interested in one of the major figures of 20th-century history. 

This article was originally published in the October 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Henry Kissinger’s years as President Nixon’s national security adviser and as secretary of state to both Nixon and President Ford are well documented, in Kissinger’s own writings and in previously classified material. Among major achievements in those years were: détente with the Soviet Union, including negotiating arms treaties; opening a relationship with China; shuttle diplomacy with Israel and others in the Middle East; and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in officially ending the war in Vietnam. But Kissinger continues to be criticized because of his ruthless pursuit of foreign policy goals. His detractors point to his involvement in invasions or interventions in East Timor, Cambodia, Laos, Angola, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Cypress, and against the Kurds. In his richly detailed and stimulating new book, Kissinger’s Shadow: The Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman, historian Greg Grandin writes that Kissinger was “the quintessential American, his cast of mind perfectly molded to his place and time.”

The book tracks Kissinger’s views and decisions and focuses on the central role those decisions have played in influencing his successors’ actions in creating the world we have today, “which accepts endless war as a matter of course.” From U.S. intervention in Central America and the invasions of Grenada and Panama to the first Gulf war and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, to the more recent drone attacks in Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan, we have seen increased U.S. commitment, more military forces deployed, and more lives lost.

Grandin, whose books include Fordlandia, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, is quite aware that many individuals, not Kissinger alone, are responsible for the evolution of the U.S. national security state. But he argues convincingly that Kissinger’s influence is greater than anyone else’s. He explores Kissinger’s thinking, including careful readings of his written work, with particular attention to his senior thesis at Harvard in 1950 on “The Meaning of History.” Kissinger has repeated many of its premises and arguments to the present day. He contends that there is no such thing as absolute truth, that truth isn’t found in facts but in the questions we ask of those facts. Often considered a foreign policy realist, Kissinger wrote in the 1960s that he respects facts, but “There are two kinds of realists: those who manipulate facts and those who create them. The West requires nothing so much as men who create their own reality.” His “realism” is profoundly elastic and means that hunches, conjecture, will and intuition are as important as facts. This approach was taken up and extended by some defense intellectuals and policy makers. Even some who initially opposed him, both Republicans and Democrats, came to adopt aspects of his thinking when their administrations were in power.

Kissinger helped reconstruct the national security state based on spectacular displays of violence, intense secrecy, the increasing use of militarism and the establishment of an imperial presidency. Power is weakness unless a country is willing to use it in “little wars,” such as Vietnam, he argued.

A key to his approach in helping the national security state adapt to new challenges was the establishment of a denial mechanism that led to strict secrecy and the falsification of records. Kissinger also insisted that what had happened in the past shouldn’t limit what action we pursue in the future. Past policies of the United States and the violence and disorder in the world are not related. Something or someone else is always the reason that led to U.S. involvement. Also, previously classified material indicates that it is hard to find a single foreign policy initiative that was not taken for political gain.

Kissinger’s Shadow attempts to move beyond praise or condemnation to demonstrate that Kissinger, for good or ill, is the architect of much foreign policy thinking that followed him. Whether a reader agrees with the author’s judgments or not, the book makes for fascinating reading. 

Never heard of Jacob Fugger? That’s probably because he was born in Augsburg in 1459, the grandson of a Swabian peasant. But by the time he died in 1525, Fugger had become, according to author Greg Steinmetz (who compared the net worth of wealthy people with the size of the economy in which they operated), the richest man who ever lived.

How Fugger rose to such riches is the tale Steinmetz spins so adroitly in his new book. By the time he was born, Fugger’s family had already gained some prominence as textile traders. The family sent young Jacob to Venice, then a great trading center, where he learned banking and was an early adopter of newly invented accounting practices that would give him a leg up on his competitors throughout his life. From there, Fugger went on to finance commercial enterprises, the Vatican, wars and even the election of the Holy Roman emperor. He battled the Roman Catholic Church’s usury laws, and his victory, says Steinmetz “ was a breakthrough for capitalism. Debt financing accelerated. The modern economy was underway.” According to Steinmetz, by facilitating the sale of papal indulgences, Fugger also lit the fuse for the Reformation.

Steinmetz, a former journalist who now works as a securities analyst, writes about Fugger in thoroughly modern terms. He attributes much of Fugger’s success, for example, to “his willingness to bet big, defy odds, and go anywhere for a deal.” This makes the book a swift and compelling read. But despite the corruption he witnessed and fostered in the church of his day, Fugger also believed the church was the route to his eternal salvation. Fugger is, writes Steinmetz, “a recognizable figure to modern observers.” Yes he is. But he is also very much a product—perhaps an advanced product—of his own extraordinarily interesting times.

In his farewell remarks to the White House staff after his resignation from the presidency, Richard Nixon said, “Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.” In his illuminating and compelling One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon, award-winning author and journalist Tim Weiner tells the story of a tormented man, considered by many to be a brilliant politician, in the process of destroying himself. Weiner, who received a Pulitzer Prize for his Philadelphia Inquirer reporting on secret government programs and a National Book Award for Legacy of Ashes, a history of the CIA, bases his book in great part on tens of thousands of government documents declassified between 2007 and 2014. Every quotation and citation is on the record.

Nixon saw himself as a great statesman whose top priority was to bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam. At the same time, he regarded politics as war. Anyone who opposed him was considered his enemy, particularly antiwar protesters. Weiner reveals the extremes Nixon was willing to go to defeat his enemies at home and abroad. He strongly believed that John Kennedy stole the 1960 presidential election from him and vowed to do whatever it took to keep that from happening again. And he did.

Days before the 1968 presidential election, with his lead over Hubert Humphrey dropping in the polls, Nixon convinced government leaders in South Vietnam to wait until after the election to make any binding deals because, as president, Nixon told them he could negotiate better terms for ending the war than President Johnson could. It is a federal crime for a citizen to conduct diplomacy with a foreign government against the interests of the U.S. Nixon would long remember that his victory that fall depended on deception and acts of dubious legality. He won by less than half a million votes, and not since 1912 had a president been elected with less of a popular mandate. Years later, Philip Habib, a senior State Department diplomat at the Paris peace talks, who served both presidents Johnson and Nixon, believed the talks then in progress would have succeeded if Nixon had not intervened. Habib said he was convinced that if Humphrey had won the election, “the war would have been over much sooner.”

Nixon’s grand strategy included persuading the leaders of China and the Soviet Union to put pressure on North Vietnam to help him pursue peace. But as that initiative failed, his frustration and anger led him to take personal control of much of the massive military power at his command, thinking he could bomb the enemy in Vietnam into submission. He did not trust anyone else, even members of his cabinet and his closest advisers (although he did count on top aides Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig to carry out his plans), and he was increasingly secretive and duplicitous. One of the best examples of this was his decision in 1970 to invade Cambodia, over the strong objections of his secretaries of state and defense. In 1971, relations between the country’s national defense and intelligence communities and the president were so bad that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had their own officially approved spy inside the White House.

H.R. Haldeman, Nixon’s chief of staff, noted accurately that “without the Vietnam War there would have been no Watergate.” After the 1970 congressional elections and with the country bitterly divided over the war, Nixon felt he had reached the low point of his presidency. At that point he devoted much time and effort to political strategy meetings that he hoped would lead him to an overwhelming re-election victory in 1972. Toward that end, the break-in at the offices of Lawrence O’Brien and the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel and other related activities came about because of Nixon’s obsession with doing everything possible that would reflect negatively on his opponents.

Rich in behind-the-scenes views of political and foreign-policy maneuvering, One Man Against the World is an excellent guide to better understand Nixon as a man, as well as his policy in Vietnam and the beginnings of the Watergate scandal. Weiner writes so well that his book is not only authoritative but a riveting read.

Christie Brinkley, Cheryl Tiegs, Jean Shrimpton, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell: Name a famous model, and more likely than not, she was once represented by Eileen Ford, who started her eponymous modeling agency with husband Jerry in 1947 and built it into an international powerhouse.

In the fascinating Model Woman, author Robert Lacey paints Ford as an intriguing paradox. She was a ruthless businesswoman about whom rival John Casablancas once said, “I will fight. I will never sleep with both eyes closed as long as that woman is around.” She was a woman uncomfortable with her own history, whitewashing her Jewish heritage and erasing an impetuous early marriage from her biography. And she was a motherly figure who raised four successful children and many of her models to live with her family as they came to New York as mere teens.

 “She kept an eye out for me, and because she did, I think other male agents and photographers were more careful around me, more respectful,” Turlington said. “Every young model should have such protection.”

Ford, who died in 2014 at the age of 92, broke new ground in the modeling industry again and again. She was an early adopter of the practice of international scouting, plucking leggy blondes from obscurity in Scandinavia. She also was shrewd in the art of brand-building, launching a makeup line in the 1960s and writing a monthly beauty advice column that was syndicated nationwide. She and Jerry helped negotiate some of the earliest long-term makeup contracts, signing Lauren Hutton with Revlon for a record-setting $200,000 in 1973.

Lacey highlights the heady world of New York City modeling: The drug-fueled nights at Studio 54 in the 1970s, which Ford likened, not flatteringly, to the last days of the Roman Empire. The 1980s, when, “at one stage . . . every member of the pop group Duran Duran had a girlfriend who was on the books with Ford.” The 1990s, when supermodels danced in George Michael videos and didn’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day.

Model Woman is a wholly entertaining, insightful and slightly bitchy look inside the moneyed world of modeling.

Anyone who has completed a grueling round of sun salutations may be glad to learn that such exertions were intended for adolescent boys. Yoga, as it was taught to Americans by Indra Devi in the 1950s, was a slower series of postures, yet it was no more “authentic” than the intense hatha yoga of today. As Michelle Goldberg capably illustrates in The Goddess Pose: The Audacious Life of Indra Devi, the Woman Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West, yoga has always been a bizarre blend of Eastern and Western tradition, particularly in the U.S. Like many other trends, yoga’s popularity began in Hollywood.

Devi, the subject of Goldberg’s terrific new biography, arrived in the City of Angels when she was almost 60 years old. Born Eugenia Peterson in early 20th-century Russia, Devi bounced from her war-torn home to Berlin in the 1930s. An actress, dancer and incurable adventurer, Devi soon traveled to a land she’d always dreamed of: India. While there, she put her charisma to good use by convincing recalcitrant yogis to be her teacher. (She also starred in a silent film on the side.) Just before she moved to Shanghai to be a diplomat’s wife, her latest guru told her to devote herself to spreading the practice of yoga. She opened her first studio the following year. When she finally arrived in Hollywood, minus the diplomat, it was 1947. Soon she was teaching the likes of Greta Garbo and Elizabeth Arden. And her story, improbable though it may seem, was only beginning. (She lived to be 102.)

As spectacular a figure as Devi obviously was, Goldberg wisely devotes a lot of her book to yoga itself: the development and popularization of not simply a physical activity, but also a philosophy. For anyone interested in the practice, The Goddess Pose offers an irresistible story of yoga’s unlikely and, yes, even audacious origins.