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Irrepressible: The Life and Times of Jessica Mitford
From the author of Red Star Sister
“An excellent biography. Brody has made the world a better place by telling [Mitford’s] saga so skillfully” ( San Francisco Chronicle ). Admirers and detractors use the same words to describe Jessica subversive, mischief-maker, muckraker. J.K. Rowling calls her her “most influential writer.” Those who knew her best simply called her Decca. Born into one of Britain’s most famous aristocratic families, she eloped with Winston Churchill’s nephew as a teenager. Their marriage severed ties with her privilege, a rupture exacerbated by the life she lead for seventy-eight years. After arriving in the United States in 1939, Decca became one of the New Deal’s most notorious bureaucrats. For her the personal was political, especially as a civil rights activist and journalist. She coined the term frenemies, and as a member of the American Communist Party, she made several, though not among the Cold War witch hunters. When she left the Communist Party in 1958 after fifteen years, she promised to be subversive whenever the opportunity arose. True to her word, late in life she hit her stride as a writer, publishing nine books before her death in 1996. Yoked to every important event for nearly all of the twentieth century, Decca not only was defined by the history she witnessed, but by bearing witness, helped to define that history. “Brisk, engaging.” ― Wall Street Journal “A valuable retelling of a provocative life.” ―Kirkus Reviews
“An excellent biography. Brody has made the world a better place by telling [Mitford’s] saga so skillfully” ( San Francisco Chronicle ). Admirers and detractors use the same words to describe Jessica subversive, mischief-maker, muckraker. J.K. Rowling calls her her “most influential writer.” Those who knew her best simply called her Decca. Born into one of Britain’s most famous aristocratic families, she eloped with Winston Churchill’s nephew as a teenager. Their marriage severed ties with her privilege, a rupture exacerbated by the life she lead for seventy-eight years. After arriving in the United States in 1939, Decca became one of the New Deal’s most notorious bureaucrats. For her the personal was political, especially as a civil rights activist and journalist. She coined the term frenemies, and as a member of the American Communist Party, she made several, though not among the Cold War witch hunters. When she left the Communist Party in 1958 after fifteen years, she promised to be subversive whenever the opportunity arose. True to her word, late in life she hit her stride as a writer, publishing nine books before her death in 1996. Yoked to every important event for nearly all of the twentieth century, Decca not only was defined by the history she witnessed, but by bearing witness, helped to define that history. “Brisk, engaging.” ― Wall Street Journal “A valuable retelling of a provocative life.” ―Kirkus Reviews
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
23 people are currently reading
721 people want to read
About the author
Leslie Brody
6 books64 followersBorn in the Bronx, New York, Leslie Brody left home at the age of 17 to become an underground press reporter for the Berkeley Tribe. A year later, she set off to travel around Europe. From 1971-1976, Brody lived in London and Amsterdam, sampling various hippie occupations. She returned to California in the late 70s and worked as a librarian both at the San Francisco College of Mortuary Science, and for the Sierra Club, while attending college at San Francisco State University. Leslie Brody has won the PEN Center USA West prize and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and several awards for her playwriting. She is the author of the memoir Red Star Sister and the story collection A Motel of the Mind and teaches full time at the Creative Writing Department of the University of Redlands. She lives in Redlands, California.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
March 5, 2017
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: Admirers and detractors use the same words to describe Jessica Mitford: subversive, mischief-maker, muckraker. J.K. Rowling calls her her “most influential writer.” Those who knew her best simply called her Decca. Born into one of Britain’s most famous aristocratic families, she eloped with Winston Churchill’s nephew as a teenager. Their marriage severed ties with her privilege, a rupture exacerbated by the life she lead for seventy-eight years.
After arriving in the United States in 1939, Decca became one of the New Deal’s most notorious bureaucrats. For her the personal was political, especially as a civil rights activist and journalist. She coined the term frenemies, and as a member of the American Communist Party, she made several, though not among the Cold War witch hunters. When she left the Communist Party in 1958 after fifteen years, she promised to be subversive whenever the opportunity arose. True to her word, late in life she hit her stride as a writer, publishing nine books before her death in 1996.
Yoked to every important event for nearly all of the twentieth century, Decca not only was defined by the history she witnessed, but by bearing witness, helped to define that history.
My Review: A chronological retelling of the strange life and exciting times of America's finest 20th-century muckraker, from her aristocratic Fascist upbringing to her time in the Communist Party USA, then her years of fame and glory after writing The American Way of Death, her most lasting contribution to literature. Her heartbreaking family life is presented with as many warts as can be expected; her relationships with her equally famous sisters Nancy Mitford, Lady Diana Mosley, Her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire, and Unity Mitford the Nazi are discussed in some detail; her husbands and her children are woven through the story, perhaps less so than her birth family.
And yet...and still...Flat. Lacking fizz. Champagne the next day.
It felt to me like the book was the proposal for the book and not the whole enchilada. Taking on a larger-than-life personality like Mitford is always challenging. She's not a person whose dimensions are easy to grasp! This daughter of privilege was unquestionably sincere in her rejection of the world she was born into, and she was completely consistent in making her anger and disdain at the family she left behind clear. (I relate.)
But a biographer who dedicates a mere 344pp to this Force of Nature risks reporting the facts but leaving the feelings behind. I felt that it was too short, so the book was frustrating...I want to know more about *her* and yet I can't imagine a book more thorough than this one is factually.
So what happened? Jessica took the place of Decca (her family nickname)? Mmmaybeee...but no, not entirely. What I think happened is, the balance between Decca and Jessica shifts dramatically after Mitford's first husband Esmond Romilly dies in 1942. We get more Jessica and less Decca. And it ends up not being a satisfying trade-off.
So should you read this fact-stuffed tale of one of life's hellions, a scamp and an imp from the get-go? Yes. She's interesting enough to make familiarity with her life an overall good thing. But don't come in expecting your notions (if you had any) about her to change, they won't. She'll still appeal to you or not based on the well-known and hand-crafted image of a rebel and a scalawag already known.
Still and all, in today's political climate, I want lives like Mitford's to be exhumed and exhibited in front of the entire reading public. Once there were giants, once there were privileged little girls who grew into fierce, antagonistic, brave, *necessary* women who knew fuck-all about fear. Let's grow more of them!
The Publisher Says: Admirers and detractors use the same words to describe Jessica Mitford: subversive, mischief-maker, muckraker. J.K. Rowling calls her her “most influential writer.” Those who knew her best simply called her Decca. Born into one of Britain’s most famous aristocratic families, she eloped with Winston Churchill’s nephew as a teenager. Their marriage severed ties with her privilege, a rupture exacerbated by the life she lead for seventy-eight years.
After arriving in the United States in 1939, Decca became one of the New Deal’s most notorious bureaucrats. For her the personal was political, especially as a civil rights activist and journalist. She coined the term frenemies, and as a member of the American Communist Party, she made several, though not among the Cold War witch hunters. When she left the Communist Party in 1958 after fifteen years, she promised to be subversive whenever the opportunity arose. True to her word, late in life she hit her stride as a writer, publishing nine books before her death in 1996.
Yoked to every important event for nearly all of the twentieth century, Decca not only was defined by the history she witnessed, but by bearing witness, helped to define that history.
My Review: A chronological retelling of the strange life and exciting times of America's finest 20th-century muckraker, from her aristocratic Fascist upbringing to her time in the Communist Party USA, then her years of fame and glory after writing The American Way of Death, her most lasting contribution to literature. Her heartbreaking family life is presented with as many warts as can be expected; her relationships with her equally famous sisters Nancy Mitford, Lady Diana Mosley, Her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire, and Unity Mitford the Nazi are discussed in some detail; her husbands and her children are woven through the story, perhaps less so than her birth family.
And yet...and still...Flat. Lacking fizz. Champagne the next day.
It felt to me like the book was the proposal for the book and not the whole enchilada. Taking on a larger-than-life personality like Mitford is always challenging. She's not a person whose dimensions are easy to grasp! This daughter of privilege was unquestionably sincere in her rejection of the world she was born into, and she was completely consistent in making her anger and disdain at the family she left behind clear. (I relate.)
But a biographer who dedicates a mere 344pp to this Force of Nature risks reporting the facts but leaving the feelings behind. I felt that it was too short, so the book was frustrating...I want to know more about *her* and yet I can't imagine a book more thorough than this one is factually.
So what happened? Jessica took the place of Decca (her family nickname)? Mmmaybeee...but no, not entirely. What I think happened is, the balance between Decca and Jessica shifts dramatically after Mitford's first husband Esmond Romilly dies in 1942. We get more Jessica and less Decca. And it ends up not being a satisfying trade-off.
So should you read this fact-stuffed tale of one of life's hellions, a scamp and an imp from the get-go? Yes. She's interesting enough to make familiarity with her life an overall good thing. But don't come in expecting your notions (if you had any) about her to change, they won't. She'll still appeal to you or not based on the well-known and hand-crafted image of a rebel and a scalawag already known.
Still and all, in today's political climate, I want lives like Mitford's to be exhumed and exhibited in front of the entire reading public. Once there were giants, once there were privileged little girls who grew into fierce, antagonistic, brave, *necessary* women who knew fuck-all about fear. Let's grow more of them!
September 23, 2010
I wish I could give this more stars, but I wasn't all that impressed by it. Brody seems to have done her homework and offers many quotations from Decca herself and from friends and families, but the book is all just narrative, offering little analysis of Decca's thoughts or actions: not what I look for in a biography. She tries for a clever, witty tone, appropriate to such a witty subject, but I found it self-conscious and annoying. This, for example:
"Suddenly, [Decca and her first husband, Esmond Romilly] were in a psychosexual crucible, with all the vino and cheap gin they could drink. He had a bitter edge. She had a wicked mouth. Finally, they were just kids."
I mean, what?
(And I know something like this can be done successfully: Laura Thompson used a chatty style in her biography of Nancy, Life in a Cold Climate: A Portrait of a Contradictory Woman, which matched her subject beautifully without being pretentious.)
Frankly, if you're looking for a biography of Decca, I'd stick with Peter Sussman's excellent edition of her letters, Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford; Sussman provides sufficient biographical information to flesh out the letters, which speak hilariously for themselves.
"Suddenly, [Decca and her first husband, Esmond Romilly] were in a psychosexual crucible, with all the vino and cheap gin they could drink. He had a bitter edge. She had a wicked mouth. Finally, they were just kids."
I mean, what?
(And I know something like this can be done successfully: Laura Thompson used a chatty style in her biography of Nancy, Life in a Cold Climate: A Portrait of a Contradictory Woman, which matched her subject beautifully without being pretentious.)
Frankly, if you're looking for a biography of Decca, I'd stick with Peter Sussman's excellent edition of her letters, Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford; Sussman provides sufficient biographical information to flesh out the letters, which speak hilariously for themselves.
February 23, 2011
A Mitford book, how could I resist? This isn't a very satisfactory one, however. No sparkle, no insight, workmanlike prose, and sufficient errors of the type that cast doubt on the quality of the research (just as an example, the author thinks Evelyn Waugh converted later in life; he was 27). Still, it fills out the picture of Decca's later years; however, I'd go to the source rather than read this.
September 24, 2011
Jessica Mitford (called "Decca" by family and friends) was the sixth of seven children born to David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron of Redesdale and wife Sydney. She grew up a very privileged child in a series of country houses in England. She didn't have much of a formal education as her mother did not believe in sending girls off to school but, Decca was a dedicated reader. Two of her sisters, Unity and Diana were well known English supporters of Adolf Hitler and her father and mother claimed to be facists. Decca was not a big fan of the privileged set and, when very young took to Communism.
When she was 19 years of age, Decca met her first husband Esmond Romilly, who was recovering from war wounds he received in the Spanish Civil War. His claim to fame was that he was a nephew of Winston Churchill. They fell in love and eloped to Spain where Esmond worked as a reporter for a local paper covering the war. After a time of arguing with their relatives who opposed the marriage they were, in fact, able to marry. They moved to England and lived in an industrial neighborhood, where Decca gave birth to a daughter. Sadly, the little girl died in a measles epidemic when she was a baby. The couple eventually moved to America before the onset of the United States entering World War II. Decca and Romilly worked odd jobs in the states and settled finally in Washington, DC. At the beginning of World War II, Romilly enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force while Decca stayed in Washington, where she was hoping to join him once he was transferred to England. She gave birth to another child (a girl, Constansia) in 1941. Esmond went missing in action in November, 1941 on his way back from a bombing raid over Germany. Despite many people, including Churchill, looking for information on the flight, no survivors of his flight were ever found.
Decca threw herself into war work after Esmond died and she met and married an American Civil Rights lawyer named Robert Treuhaft in 1943, eventually settling down in Oakland, CA. The couple had two children, Nicholas (who was killed in a traffic accident) and Benjamin. She wasn't a hovering mother but, loved her kids. They described her as "matter-of-fact" and "not touchly-feely".
Throughout much of the early 1950s the couple worked with the local Civil Rights groups and were involved in civil rights campaigns. Mitford and Treuhaft became active members of the Communist Party and in 1953 at the beginning of McCarthyism, were summoned to testify for the HUAC in Washington. They both refused to testify. Finally, deciding that they could do more for justice outside the party they resigned in 1958.
She was a very busy lady that wrote many books and had great success at it. She never let the fact that she wasn't educated in the schools of higher learning stop her from doing what she was good at and didn't let any grass grow under her feet. If you were a friend, she would do anything for you and if you were not. Well, you figure it out. The author does a first rate job describing Decca's life and it was a colorful life at most times. Readers will enjoy this book it's a keeper.
When she was 19 years of age, Decca met her first husband Esmond Romilly, who was recovering from war wounds he received in the Spanish Civil War. His claim to fame was that he was a nephew of Winston Churchill. They fell in love and eloped to Spain where Esmond worked as a reporter for a local paper covering the war. After a time of arguing with their relatives who opposed the marriage they were, in fact, able to marry. They moved to England and lived in an industrial neighborhood, where Decca gave birth to a daughter. Sadly, the little girl died in a measles epidemic when she was a baby. The couple eventually moved to America before the onset of the United States entering World War II. Decca and Romilly worked odd jobs in the states and settled finally in Washington, DC. At the beginning of World War II, Romilly enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force while Decca stayed in Washington, where she was hoping to join him once he was transferred to England. She gave birth to another child (a girl, Constansia) in 1941. Esmond went missing in action in November, 1941 on his way back from a bombing raid over Germany. Despite many people, including Churchill, looking for information on the flight, no survivors of his flight were ever found.
Decca threw herself into war work after Esmond died and she met and married an American Civil Rights lawyer named Robert Treuhaft in 1943, eventually settling down in Oakland, CA. The couple had two children, Nicholas (who was killed in a traffic accident) and Benjamin. She wasn't a hovering mother but, loved her kids. They described her as "matter-of-fact" and "not touchly-feely".
Throughout much of the early 1950s the couple worked with the local Civil Rights groups and were involved in civil rights campaigns. Mitford and Treuhaft became active members of the Communist Party and in 1953 at the beginning of McCarthyism, were summoned to testify for the HUAC in Washington. They both refused to testify. Finally, deciding that they could do more for justice outside the party they resigned in 1958.
She was a very busy lady that wrote many books and had great success at it. She never let the fact that she wasn't educated in the schools of higher learning stop her from doing what she was good at and didn't let any grass grow under her feet. If you were a friend, she would do anything for you and if you were not. Well, you figure it out. The author does a first rate job describing Decca's life and it was a colorful life at most times. Readers will enjoy this book it's a keeper.
October 20, 2010
A welcome book, long overdue. Besides her own memoirs, which are limited in scope, we could only catch glimpses of Jessica in earlier books that are more about her sisters. Jessica is fascinating, a droll gadfly and jester who used her wits and endless energy to promote civil rights, uncover corruption and generally help the downtrodden, but even into adulthood latent communist sentiments meant she didn’t mind stealing—jiggery pokery she called it—from people or institutions she felt had more than they needed. Reading about her exploits creates an irresistible sort of mental frisson because she was both superbly inspiring and spectacularly thoughtless, even cruel. At nineteen she ran away to Spain with her soon-to-be husband to fight the fascists, which was wonderful for the people and the cause she was able to help, but devastating to her family who had no idea where she was or what had happened to her. Maybe because less has been written about her later life I especially enjoyed the last sections of the book. By that point it was definitely a page turner for me—I couldn’t put it down. If you’ve already read other Mitford books the first chapters may drag a little. POISON PENMANSHIP, a collection of Jessica’s muckraking investigative reporting, was reissued this year and if you have both books you can follow along, reading her essays as they are covered in this biography.
January 6, 2012
I received this book through the giveaway program here at Good Reads. I especially appreciate this program because it introduced me to a wonderful book about a woman that I knew very little about.
I was aware that Jessica Mitford was a writer, whose book, The American Way of Death, had caused a great deal of fuss when it was published. I also knew that Jessica Mitford was somehow related to Nancy Mitford and they had several other famous or infamous relatives. My sense of history is not too well organized, so I don't always have my chronology in proper order.
Leslie Brody did a great job of helping me understand Jessica Mitford's life and putting it in perspective with both British and American history. I was pleased to have a better understanding not only of Mitford, but some other historical figures whose lives intersected with hers.
Irrepressible is a well-written biography of a fascinating woman. Brody fulfilled my desires of a good book - she taught me some new info, she helped me "live" in a new world for awhile and she brought a number of characters to life for me.
I would recommend this book to those who are interested in history, to folks who want to know more about a strong, interesting woman and to those who enjoy reading biographies. Brody has written a book that many people might find intriguing.
I was aware that Jessica Mitford was a writer, whose book, The American Way of Death, had caused a great deal of fuss when it was published. I also knew that Jessica Mitford was somehow related to Nancy Mitford and they had several other famous or infamous relatives. My sense of history is not too well organized, so I don't always have my chronology in proper order.
Leslie Brody did a great job of helping me understand Jessica Mitford's life and putting it in perspective with both British and American history. I was pleased to have a better understanding not only of Mitford, but some other historical figures whose lives intersected with hers.
Irrepressible is a well-written biography of a fascinating woman. Brody fulfilled my desires of a good book - she taught me some new info, she helped me "live" in a new world for awhile and she brought a number of characters to life for me.
I would recommend this book to those who are interested in history, to folks who want to know more about a strong, interesting woman and to those who enjoy reading biographies. Brody has written a book that many people might find intriguing.
August 29, 2015
I was a little disappointed by the book. It covers the ground well and describes what was by any account a fascinating life and perhaps this is where my reservations lie. The book describes but does not really analyse or explain how and why someone brought up in privilege grew to resist and resent this. There is much to understand for example in how and why a childish stance of resistance to what an older sister did and believed developed into a genuine and thorough going radicalism.
May 21, 2012
I think Jessica has taken Nancy's place as my favorite Mitford sister. This biography reads like a novel, with the heroine of the story being so much more colorful and interesting than I could have imagined. I loved reading about her adventures and was so happy to know she took such a leading role in certain events that have changed the course of history in this country.
December 14, 2010
It is all about my mommy and daddy. It is quirky but a spectacularly told story. You should be so lucky as to have Leslie Brody write a book about yours.
April 15, 2011
Best suited for hardcore fans of the Mitford sisters
September 1, 2018
excellent book about a fascinating woman.
January 1, 2021
Jessica Mitford, born into a British aristocracy, ran away to the Spanish Civil War with Winston Churchill's nephew. She had two sisters who were close friends of Hitler, one who unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide when Germany and Britain went to war in WWII. Another sister became the Duchess of Devonshire, another became a famous author, and her husband and only brother died during WWII. Her parents were odd and interesting people. She became a member of the American Communist party, a civil right activist, and famous muckraking journalist. Her work exposed the American funeral industry to the degree that they changed their policies to be more helpful to grieving families. She exposed problems for women giving birth and explored the need for prison reform. She left the Communist Party but not her desire to champion for the underdog. Her parties were famous and attended by the most interesting left wing individuals. She wrote nine books before she died in 1996.
September 12, 2020
For those fascinated by anything Mitford, this will be a rewarding read. Mary Lovell’s biography of the sisters is excellent but since it covers all six of them, it can’t be as comprehensive as this one. I was aware of Jessica Mitford as a writer of exposés and knew she was an active member of the Communist party but I hadn’t realized her complete dedication to liberal causes. Reading about all the issues into which she fearlessly dove was like hearing the news stories that played through my late childhood-early teen years. Interesting fact in this book: in 1970 Hillary Rodman interned at the law firm of Jessica’s husband. When Hillary became more famous, their reaction was a sort of surprised “who knew?”.
May 13, 2018
A lightweight, sympathetic, admiring bio. Easy to read. Easy to digest. Not much in the way of complications, ambiguities, and confusions of real life. But an easy entry into the life on the left in the UK in the 30s, in the US in the 40/5os/60s... A taste of peerage life. With walk-ins by all the right people. Vignettes of Oakland under the racist leadership of the Trib, Guerneville when it was a politcal hangout, and SF in the war years. And of course, some family dynamics--what else could you have when one sis is a brazen, hot-dog commie, two are Nazis (one rumored to be Hitler's fiancé ), one a tell-all (gently) writer, and another a Brit Duchess.
June 15, 2019
I’ve been obsessed with the Mitford sisters since I first learned of them in college. Hilarious, fascinating, involved personally in the most interesting stories of the 20th century- I just can’t get enough!
This was the first book I’ve ever read exclusively on Decca (Jessica) and I learned a ton about her time in America. I knew she had written a book on funerals in America and that was about it, but she was involved in EVERYTHING!
That said, this book does not gloss over her alcoholism, occasional cruelty, or her borderline irritating politics. That said, as her family was so deeply involved in the fascist movement, I still have to consider her intentions good. Mostly good.
This was the first book I’ve ever read exclusively on Decca (Jessica) and I learned a ton about her time in America. I knew she had written a book on funerals in America and that was about it, but she was involved in EVERYTHING!
That said, this book does not gloss over her alcoholism, occasional cruelty, or her borderline irritating politics. That said, as her family was so deeply involved in the fascist movement, I still have to consider her intentions good. Mostly good.
July 4, 2021
I had read a bit about the Mitford sisters, but this was the first book I read exclusively about Jessica (aka Decca), who turned her back on the aristocratic family she was born into to elope with Winston Churchill's leftist nephew, fight for the partisans in Spain, lose her husband in WW II, write the incomperable The American Way of Death, be hounded by her membership in the American Communist party. Highly educational and well-written with moments of heartbreak from a life lived at full throttle.
December 20, 2011
I am as devoted to the Mitfords as anyone, but I found this biography a little boring. As much as I agree with Jessica Mitford's politics more than any of her sisters (and certainly more than Unity, who was friends with Hitler, or Diana, who married the British fascist leader, Oswald Mosley), Decca in this telling also comes off as pretty insufferable at times. Of course one does not have to like the subject of a biography in order to like the biography, but this account of Mitford's life is almost all narrative. There is very little analysis of why Decca did what she did; instead it's a very name-dropping, heavy- on-the-Community-Party recounting of everything she did. It must be said that I'm more attracted to the growing-up of the Mitfords and all of the aristocratic foolishness that accompanied it than I am to the one who became an American leftist (too familiar?), but even were that not the case I still wanted to like this more than I did.
October 17, 2010
Yesterday I slurped up Leslie Brody's "Irrepressible: The Life and Times of Jessica Mitford." Splendid, superb, brilliant.
There's much that can go wrong with biography: too much detail, not enough detail, inability to detect unappealing attributes in the subject, tendency to over-focus on subject's unappealing attributes; lack of professional notes and sourcing and more. Brody is just right: not too much, not too little, well balanced, impeccably sourced notes, and most important: she's a delicious writer.
Also important, this book goes a long way toward setting straight many of the slurs and biases reported in other Mitfordiana (so to speak). Finest kind.
August 15, 2011
I'm fascinated by the Mitford family--they're all such strong personalities, and Jessica definitely was one of the strongest. I read this last year, along with their book of letters--that's one I'll definitely read again and again. Their relationships are so complex, none more so than those between Jessica and her sisters. She was definitely a rebel--left home to elope with her cousin and ended up living in America the majority of her adult life. I would have loved knowing her--Irrepressible is an excellent title for this story about her most amazing life. Would love to read her book "Hons and Rebels".
October 17, 2011
Confession time - before I was introduced to this book, I had no idea who Jessica Mitford was. Having read the book, I am sad I have spent so long without knowing her. What an interesting, energetic and involved character she was! Leslie Brody has done an amazing job of capturing Jessica (or Decca, as she was called). There is nothing dry or boring about either the woman or the book. This biography is well written, easy to follow and read, and interesting. There are also pictures. I happen to love pictures in biographies. My favorite is at page 214. It is a picture of Decca at age 5 looking defiant, stubborn and immovable - a foreshadowing of the woman she would become.
October 28, 2013
For me, growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 60s and 70s, Jessica Mitford was a goddess of smart, scathingly funny yet solid journalism, daring to illuminate the foolishness and hypocrisy to be found in the conventions of American life. Her expose of the funeral industry and her collection titled "Poison Penmanship" have been a lifelong inspiration to me as a journalist and author. That she is hardly known today is criminal. That Leslie Brody wrote this wonderful biography of her is a triumph! As a culture we need to remember Ms. Mitford and this book is a grand tribute to her.
September 29, 2010
This book lives up to its subject! Mitford was a muckraker, a raconteur (raconteuse?), and a total party-girl of the party. There will doubtless be scholarly biographies galore within the next few years that will turn her into some kind of mouthpiece for something or other, but this one accesses the essence of a woman who lived in the moment. Mitford was great good company, and so is this book.
January 8, 2011
I've been fascinated by the Mitford sisters for years. This is a great biography about Jessica, who wrote the ground breaking expose of the funeral industry, The American Way of Death, a book that created the genre of exposes and literally changed the landscape of American public policy and consumer protection in America.
February 9, 2011
Very interesting biography of Jessica Mitford. I have read several books about the Mitfords but Jessica is usually covered in just a few paragraphs: she ran away to fight in the Spanish Civil War, she was a communist and moved to America. While all of that is correct, there is a lot more to her story.
April 8, 2011
I loved this book - the Mitford sisters are fascinating and I have been drawn to Jessica Mitford, her politics and her pluck for a long time. But as a resident now of the Bay Area and in particular Oakland, her story and that of husband, Bob Treuhaft and her children resonated highly.
It's a quick and energetic read and I thank the author greatly for this insightful and delightful biography.
It's a quick and energetic read and I thank the author greatly for this insightful and delightful biography.
July 18, 2011
A fascinating woman from a fascinating family. Decca is my favorite Mitford girl, and this very readable biography does an excellent job of revealing this recovered aristocrat, communist activist, writer, and mother as an independed individual rather than yet another cog in the Mitford Empire. http://kathrynfunk.squarespace.com/jo...
May 27, 2013
As a newly minted Mitford fan, this biography was badly written and underwhelming until getting to the settled part of Decca's life, where she and her husband were politically active as Communists and social rights activists. The writing smoothed out and was much less awkward at this point, and the sheer amount of living Decca did took over the narrative. I enjoyed the second half very much.
June 9, 2016
Jessica Mitford is my personal hero, and I'm pretty indulgent of anyone else who feels the same (as this author clearly does). I loved gleaning more details of Jessica's life from this breezy, chatty biography, and I'll happily give it a pass on its somewhat book-report-ish tone and the spottiness of the later chapters.
June 3, 2011
This biography is well written and interesting. Despite these attributed, however, my attention waned. I'd had no previous knowledge of Jessica Mitford and I didn't feel the need to plow through to learn more. I gave it a whirl based on a positive review of the book.
January 20, 2011
An engaging biography of Jessica "Decca" Mitford's life. Since her life was incredibly interesting, there's a lot that goes by quickly. Much as, I suspect, Decca would have experienced it herself.
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