Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes

by Adam Hochschild

From the best-selling author of King Leopold's Ghost and Spain in Our Hearts comes the astonishing but forgotten story of an immigrant sweatshop worker who married an heir to a great American fortune and became one of the most charismatic radical leaders of her time.

Rose Pastor arrived in New York City in 1903, a Jewish refugee from Russia who had worked in cigar factories since the age of eleven. Two years later, she captured headlines across the globe when she married James Graham Phelps Stokes, scion of one of the legendary 400 families of New York high society. Together, this unusual couple joined the burgeoning Socialist Party and, over the next dozen years, moved among the liveliest group of activists and dreamers this country has ever seen. Their friends and houseguests included Emma Goldman, Big Bill Haywood, Eugene V. Debs, John Reed, Margaret Sanger, Jack London, and W.E.B. Du Bois. Rose stirred audiences to tears and led strikes of restaurant waiters and garment workers. She campaigned alongside the country’s earliest feminists to publicly defy laws against distributing information about birth control, earning her notoriety as “one of the dangerous influences of the country” from President Woodrow Wilson. But in a way no one foresaw, her too-short life would end in the same abject poverty with which it began.

By a master of narrative nonfiction, Rebel Cinderella unearths the rich, overlooked life of a social justice campaigner who was truly ahead of her time.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Politics, Feminism, Biography Memoir, American History

320 pages, Hardcover

First published March 3, 2020

About the author

Hochschild was born in New York City. As a college student, he spent a summer working on an anti-government newspaper in South Africa and subsequently worked briefly as a civil rights worker in Mississippi in 1964. Both were politically pivotal experiences about which he would later write in his book Finding the Trapdoor. He later was part of the movement against the Vietnam War, and, after several years as a daily newspaper reporter, worked as a writer and editor for the leftwing Ramparts magazine. In the mid-1970s, he was one of the co-founders of Mother Jones.

Hochschild's first book was a memoir, Half the Way Home: a Memoir of Father and Son (1986), in which he described the difficult relationship he had with his father. His later books include The Mirror at Midnight: a South African Journey (1990; new edition, 2007), The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin (1994; new edition, 2003), Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels (1997), which collects his personal essays and reportage, and King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (1998; new edition, 2006), a history of the conquest and colonization of the Congo by Belgium's King Léopold II. His Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves, published in 2005, is about the antislavery movement in the British Empire.

Hochschild has also written for The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, and The Nation. He was also a commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. Hochschild's books have been translated into twelve languages.

A frequent lecturer at Harvard's annual Nieman Narrative Journalism Conference and similar venues, Hochschild lives in San Francisco and teaches writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He is married to sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild.

Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Hoc...

Reviews

[Bruce Katz · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 I've enjoyed Hochschild's books in the past. This one seemed like a slight step down -- somehow the whole didn't seem equal to the sum of its parts.

The life of Rose Pastor Stokes forms the skeleton on which the book is built. She was an internationally known American figure at one time, but I had never heard of her. Her life was remarkable. Born in the late 19th century in the Pale -- that no man's land that was part-Russia, part-Poland, where Jews were settled -- she was brought to America as a child. She had almost no formal education but somehow managed to rise from working in a cigar "factory" to becoming a popular writer, marrying into one of the wealthiest (definitely not Jewish) families in America, and ultimately becoming a controversial actor in the American socialist movement.

Hers is a story worth telling. Her life intersected with some of the major figures and movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The book covers aspects of American life, society, and culture that are nowhere near as widely known today as they should be. So many of the attitudes and legal protections that we take for granted today didn't exist at all then. Hundreds of thousands of people -- mostly immigrants -- lived in appallingly crowded city tenements where diseases spread unchecked. American workers had no protections at all. Men, women, and even children worked 12-16 hour days, six days a week, in horrible conditions. The pay was low pay, and they suffered astonishing rates of disabling injuries and death for which they had no legal remedy or recourse. Their attempts to organize and strike were met by violent repression by business owners and government officials that commonly led to protesters being beaten and shot to death. Despite this, a labor movement managed to form and grow. In this Gilded Age, the financial gap between ordinary Americans and the super-wealthy class of railroad barons and business owners was enormous. (Hochschild notes that we are in a similar situation today.) There was widespread racism and the kind of nationalism that vilified immigrants, particularly Jews, Italians, and Irish. Once World War One began, the repression of workers' movements expanded to a degree that would shock most readers today: people who spoke against the war, for example, were beaten and imprisoned, and newspapers and magazines were shut down.

"Rebel Cinderella" captures all of these things and more -- the large national and international currents, the smaller tragedies and victories... Yet the book never quite came together for me. I'm not sure why. Still, I'm glad I read it. I'm glad to have been introduced to Ms. Stokes and to have been reminded of the battles that had to be fought to win so many of the things we enjoy today.

[Mal Warwick · Rating 5 out of 5]

You’re unlikely ever to have come across her name before, but you’ll be fascinated by the remarkable story Berkeley author Adam Hochschild tells about her life in his latest excursion into popular history. Rose Pastor Stokes was one of the most famous and influential people, women OR men, during the crucial years that spanned the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson. From 1905 to 1921, she continuously captured newspaper headlines for her unlikely marriage to one of the country’s wealthiest men and her relentless campaign on behalf of the labor movement and socialism in America.

Born Rose Wieslander to an Orthodox Jewish family in the Russian Empire (present-day Poland) in 1879, she emigrated with her mother to the United States in 1890. At the age of eleven she went to work in a New York cigar factory, and for the next twelve years she experienced the debilitating poverty, chronic hunger, and life-threatening working conditions that millions of other immigrants went through in Gilded Age America. As Hochschild notes, “cigar workers suffered the second-highest death rate from tuberculosis of any occupation in America; only stonecutters had it worse. . . All her adult life, she would be troubled by lung problems.” And like thousands of others, the experience radicalized her, pointing her in the direction of the growing socialist movement in America.

“From rags to riches to radical”

Not long after the turn of the twentieth century, Rose stumbled into a romantic relationship with one of New York’s most eligible bachelors: James Graham Phelps Stokes. Graham Stokes was the scion of one of the wealthiest and most prominent families in America. (If you’re familiar with business, you may recall the name Phelps Dodge Corporation, a huge mining company that was only one source of the family’s wealth.) The two met when Graham became involved in the University Settlement House on the Lower East Side of Manhattan; Rose was assigned to interview him there for a newspaper.

She and her millionaire husband promoted socialism in America

The match was unlikely in several ways other than the economic disparity: he was seven years older and six-feet-four, more than a head taller than Rose; he was Episcopalian, she Jewish, at a time when antisemitism was rampant; and he held a bachelor’s degree from Yale and an M.D. from Columbia, while she had benefited from little formal education. Yet Graham harbored progressive sentiments highly unusual for his class and shared with Rose a conviction that revolution was necessary if not inevitable. The two fell in love and married, despite intensive opposition from his family — and Rose’s life for decades thereafter was never the same. The Phelps-Stokes-Dodge clan “had never imagined welcoming into its ranks an immigrant former cigar worker who had never finished elementary school.” Rose was Cinderella come to life.

A decade in the American Socialist Party

Rose and Graham’s engagement and wedding were front-page news, and their marriage became the source of endless fascination in the press for years to come. That fascination grew when both Rose and Graham joined the Socialist Party of Eugene V. Debs and the IWW of “Big Bill” Haywood; the two subsequently appeared jointly onstage at scores of public events for both organizations. However, the pair split from the Socialist Party in 1917; Graham enthusiastically supported the U.S. entry into World War I, and Rose reluctantly came to agree. (Not long afterward, Rose became a founding member of the American Communist Party.)

A popular speaker at IWW and Socialist Party events across America

Although painfully shy at first, Rose soon proved herself to be a powerful and charismatic orator, routinely overshadowing other speakers, particularly her husband. For years she was one of the most sought-after attractions at socialist and labor gatherings, speaking either in English or in Yiddish. She was also a popular columnist in the Yiddish press, first in the Orthodox Yiddishes Tageblatt and later in the socialist Forverts (later the Jewish Daily Forward).

A who’s who of the Left in the early 20th century

Displaying his customary skill at research, Hochschild brings Rose to life on the page with excerpts from her personal diary, her unfinished autobiography, and the abundant contemporary press accounts. During the two decades when she and Graham were together — they divorced in 1925 — they hosted many of the country’s most illustrious progressive intellectuals and social activists.

They numbered among their friends for varying lengths of time Debs, Haywood, Emma Goldman, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, “Mother” Jones, Clarence Darrow, Margaret Sanger, Upton Sinclair, Jack London, and Max Eastman as well as Russian (later Soviet) author Maxim Gorky. By illustrating the interaction among these iconic figures, and describing Rose’s involvement in public debate about the leading issues of the day — the Panic of 1907, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, World War I, women’s suffrage, the post-war Red Scare — Hochschild opens the door on a colorful and consequential period in our nation’s history. Rebel Cinderella is popular history at its best.

[Carly Crown · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wish this book was written in Roses point of view. Instead, I felt like I was reading a research book to write a paper for high school.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the fourth book I've read by Adam Hochschild and the first disappointment. The unlikely marriage of Rose Pastor, a Jewish, poorly educated immigrant from the Lower East Side, and Graham Phelps Stokes, an enormously wealthy man from New York's high society, may have stirred emotions at the time. But, for me, Hochschild's writing does not bring either of them to life. If you are looking for a story that resonates years after finishing a book, I would strongly recommend his "King Leopold's Ghost" instead.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

The old saying goes, "truth is stranger than fiction". In the case of Adam Hochschild's biography of Rose Pastor Stokes, history is stranger than fiction. "Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes" is a masterful historical account of a Russian Jewish immigrant who came to America in 1903, and barely eked out a living in a cigar factory as a cigar roller. From the humblest of beginnings and harsh living conditions in Cleveland followed by toiling in New York City's Lower East Side, Rose Pastor was the epitome of the immigrant escaping religious and social persecution from Europe only to find that America's streets were not "paved with gold" as many had dreamed.
What is marvelous however, is the romance she has with the son of one of America's most wealthy business magnates. When Rose Pastor and James Graham Phelps Stokes get married at his family's posh Connecticut resort in 1905, the American public instantly recognizes the "Cinderella story" significance of the union.
Rose Pastor Stokes had never forgotten her impoverished past, and together with her husband, made incredibly important inroads towards socialist reform in labor and politics itself during a time when America was just coming into its own as a world power through World War I.
Hochschild perfectly captures this time in American history where white nationalism was at its peak, and anti-immigration fervor was supported by corporate anti-labor union forces. In the middle of this tidal wave of social and economic unrest was the earnest voice and tireless work of Rose Pastor Stokes. She sought to promote better work conditions for the garment industry workers and many other factory laborers in New York City and beyond.

I thoroughly enjoyed this little known piece of American history. I was moved by the strange and ultimately broken relationship between Rose and her husband James as they tried to reconcile the differences created between living in their Gilded Age environment while striving to correct the social and economic injustices that surrounded them in the first thirty years of the twentieth century.

[Paul Waibel · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a time when it was said that a woman’s name should appear in the newspapers only to announce her birth, engagement, marriage, and death, Rose Parker Stokes was the woman’s name most often appearing in American newspapers between 1918 and 1921. She was also the subject of a popular novel, Salome of the Tenements, published in 1922. Within less than a decade, her name disappeared from the public space, while the names of those who were key figures in her life—Eugene Debs, John Reed, Emma Goldman, and others—have never disappeared from scholarly or popular attention.

The assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 was followed by a wave of pogroms during which “angry mobs rampage through towns, cities, and Jewish shtetls, or hamlets, raping women, looting shops and homes, and attacking Jews of all ages.” Pogroms against the Jews in Russia were nothing new. But the new repression that included new legal restrictions on the daily life of Jews and where they could live resulted in a wave of Jewish emigration to Western Europe and America.

Rosa Harriet Wieslander, an orthodox Jewish refugee from the Jewish shtetl of Augustów, was only 11 years old when she arrived in New York City in November 1890. Like so many immigrant children, Rosa found employment as cheap labor producing, but not enjoying, the wealth that earned America before World War I the epitaph, “the Gilded Age.”

Rosa spent her first 12 years of employment rolling cigars. She earned 77 cents for her first week’s work, roughly $22 today. Later, she earned 13 cents for every 100 cigars she rolled, enabling her to occasionally earn as much as $8 in a week, roughly $240 today.

Immigrants, especially Jews, were looked down on by most Americans. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge described those from Russia as “inferior people,” and as “dangerous to America as the Goths and Vandals who trampled over Rome.” The author Henry James, after visiting the Lower East Side of NYC, described the Jews he saw there as “swarming . . . small, strange animals—snakes or worms.” The future president, Woodrow Wilson, described the immigrants coming to America at the turn of the century as “multitudes of men of the lowest class [possessing] neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick intelligence.” It was as if, Wilson said, that “the countries of the south of Europe were disburdening themselves of the more sordid and hapless elements of their population.”

Rosa’s life took a dramatic turn in 1903. She was writing articles for the Yiddishes Tageblatt, the nation’s orthodox Jewish newspaper. She wrote articles calling for an end to “Jew-baiting and Negro-lynching” and calling attention the grinding poverty in which the working classes lived. One evening in July, she met young James Graham Phelps Stokes, a member of one of America’s wealthiest families. Despite his wealth, “Graham,” as he was known, was committed to championing the cause of justice for the working classes, and after meeting and marrying Rosa in July 1905, advancing the cause of socialism.

Socialism prior to World War I was not smeared by an association with Bolshevism and communism that resulted from the Russian Revolution in 1917. It attracted many evangelical Christians and reform minded members of the wealthy classes, who the press sometimes referred to as “millionaire socialists.” Graham and Rosa joined the Socialist Party of America. Graham ran unsuccessfully as a Socialist candidate for the New York State Assembly in 1908.

Rosa’s marriage to Graham Stokes was a real-life Cinderella story. Their residence of Caritas Island off Connecticut’s Long Island Sound coastline became a sort of aviary frequented by the who’s who of intellectuals who identified themselves as socialists, trade-unionists, anarchists, suffragists, poets, etc. Among those in the circle around Graham and Rosa were, at various times, Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, William F. Cochran, Clarence Darrow, Upton Sinclair, John Reed, W.E.B. Du Bois, Jack London, “Mother” Jones, Lincoln Steffens, and many more. Rockwell Kent referred to Caritas as “the very citadel of the Socialist movement.”

Two events in 1917 doomed the socialist movement in America and eventually were responsible for destroying Cinderella’s marriage to her prince charming. The first was the Russian Revolution that ended with a Bolshevik victory and the establishment Marist-Leninist totalitarianism. The second was Woodrow Wilson’s decision to lead the United States into the Great War in Europe to secure a victory for England and France, thus protecting the immense financial investments of America’s bankers and industrialists.

Once the United States entered the war in Europe, Graham became an ardent supporter of the war effort, while Rosa became a fervent defender of the Russian Revolution. Rosa never wavered in her support of the new Soviet Union, whereas some of her socialist friends who actually visited the USSR—e.g., Emma Goldman—returned totally disillusioned. Rosa and Graham separated and eventually divorced. Rosa went to Frankfurt, Germany in February 1933 to undergo a new radiation treatment for cancer developed by a prominent doctor who was an outspoken anti-Semite, who later became an SS officer who gave “a notorious illustrated lecture portraying cancer cells as Jews and victorious beams of radiation as Nazi storm troopers.”

Adam Hochschild is a historian in the best tradition of Barbara Tuchman, Paul Johnson, Bruce Catton, and others who write scholarly researched history in a style than can be enjoyable to read as well as informative. I have read 2 of his earlier books, King Leopold’s Ghost (1998) and To End All Wars (2011) and adopted them as reading for history courses I taught as a history professor. When I first heard of Rebel Cinderella, I knew I was in for a great reading experience. I was not disappointed. Rebel Cinderella appears at just the right time. The 2020 presidential election has opened up interest in the history of socialism in America’s history, as well as comparisons of the era known as the Gilded Age and our own time, considered by many to be a second Gilded Age.

As both a retired history professor and one who enjoys a good book, I wholeheartedly recommend Adam Hochschild’s Rebel Cinderella : Rose Pastor Stokes: Sweatshop Immigrant, Aristocrat’s Wife, Socialist Crusader (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020).

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5⭐️

[donna_ehm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hochschild really captures the feel and tone of the early 20th century, immersing the reader in the multitude of complex, inter-related changes happening within society and the broader culture in the States at that time. At times Hochschild strays too far afield in outlining those changes and seems to forget the subject of his book is Rose Pastor Stokes and not, say, the first World War. As reviewer Shawna notes, "This is more a book about the rise and fall of a movement with the Pastor-Stokes playing a main role, then a book about Rose Pastor Stokes."

Otherwise I felt I learned a lot not only about what was happening at this time but about Rose Pastor Stokes herself, a remarkable woman who was fearless in the face of an entire social order telling her to be quiet, not to interfere in the business of men, not to have an opinion much less stand on a stage and shout it out to hundreds of people. In Rose's case, society also meant her husband and his very prominent and wealthy family, which naturally put extra strain on those relations. But Rose never wavered from her beliefs in the rights of workers and the evils of capitalism. If anything, she gradually became more and more radical in those beliefs, eventually alienating a number of former unionist and Communist supporters (including her husband).

Hochschild references the 1912 New York City waiters' strike (among other general worker strikes) but that one stood out to me because I had previously read The Plaza: The Secret Life of America's Most Famous Hotel (Julie Satow) which also talked about that particular strike, as well as the influence of and effect on unionized workers in the 2000s when many of its rooms were converted to condominiums. So it was interesting to think back on that book and imagining those key players perhaps connecting with Rose Pastor Stokes, if not then then maybe in the years to come.

[Linda Krasnow · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy much about this book. It contained a lot of information, perhaps too much information. It almost seemed like an Erik Larson book where it seems you go down the rabbit hole of detail.

Adam Hochschild did intense research on the labor movement and those involved with it. Then he moved on to the resistance against the U.S. entering WWI. He ended with overthrow of the Tsar by the Bolsheviks and the start of Communism. I think I wanted more of the human interest side instead of just the facts which can be dry.

After sleeping on it, i came to a deeper realization of my feelings about this book. Too often history is literally "his" story. The author starts our with the intention of looking at history from Rose's perspective but the story is usurped by the actual events from the past. The men are in charge of the factories, men run the government and decide who fights in the wars and men, by sheer physical strength, most often are the rebels. So what started out as a woman's story cannot be supported by the actualities of life. Due to this, I am more interested in a woman's feelings about history than the detailed events.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing story! Gave it four stars because it read almost like a novel and told me so much that I did not know about the early 1900s. There are so many parallels to the feelings of people in the United States today. I knew strikes were violent in those times, but did not realize the variety and intensity of political action. U.S. got through those terrible times without civil war, perhaps we will now as well. My fear is that war seems to be the only thing that brings together a semblance of unity. And I do not want any war!! Will be interesting to read my review ten years from now.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a solid biography of another woman whose activism we haven’t heard about. I’m so glad I wasn’t born a hundred years earlier.

[Stetson · Rating 1 out of 5]

A dull biography about a figure of no actual historical significance.

Why should we care enough about Rose Pastor Stokes to read a book about her? This question is never answered. There are more significant figures in this book that would hardly deserve such attention.

Perhaps the value of this book - for those who read it more carefully than the author has conceived it - will be to instruct readers on the futility of trying to turn one's life into a cause.

[Deacon Tom (Feeling Better) · Rating 1 out of 5]

NDF. 74%

Entirely to political for me.

[Eliana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned a lot from this book about early 1900 USA history by following the story of Rose Pastor Graham. It was such an important era, with big events that shape the way the USA is now. I learned about union workers (IWW), the horrible conditions of tabaco and garment workers, immigrants families, USA rationale to join WWI, the birth of socialism in the USA, birth control rights, and more.

This book is not easy to read as you can tell there are a lot of events happening during that time period and the author built the narrative by tracing and putting together fragments of notes from newspapers, diaries, etc. the reader is the one, at times, making the narrative more vivid using their imagination.

I was inspired by Rose Pastor Graham and her determination to make the world more equitable.

[Francisco Manuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rebel Cinderella is a compelling and timely portrait of Rosa Pastor Stokes, a woman whose life story feels as urgent today as it did a century ago. Adam Hochschild uses her unlikely journey to illuminate the tensions that defined early-20th-century America. Rosa goes from impoverished immigrant and child laborer to nationally known socialist activist. Yet the book’s real value lies not just in the dramatic outlines of Rosa’s life, but in the clarity it brings to the ideas she championed and the social forces she confronted.

Rosa’s unwavering commitment to workers, immigrants, and the marginalized makes her both a historical figure and a mirror. It is unsettling and fascinating to see just how little has changed. The debates over socialism, the resentment toward immigrants, and the indifference of the comfortable to the struggles of the working class echo loudly in our own moment. Hochschild captures this continuity without forcing the parallel; the lessons surface naturally through Rosa’s convictions and the costs she bore for them.

What emerges is a portrait of a woman whose moral clarity outshone the wealth and privilege she briefly married into, a reminder that progress is neither linear nor secure. If the book is sometimes painful, it is because the greed and shortsightedness she battled against feel so familiar. Yet that is also why the book is so valuable.

Rebel Cinderella offers not only an absorbing historical narrative but also an invitation to reflect on the unfinished struggles around us. It is well worth reading for both its content and its enduring lessons.

[Mia · Rating 3 out of 5]

For twenty years, 1905-1925, Rose Pastor Stokes and her husband Graham Stokes were at the center of American history and the political turmoil of the early twentieth century. Rose Pastor was from an impoverished Jewish immigrant family. She lived in a tenement and worked for starvation wages, epitomizing the terrible conditions in the city of New York and other industrialized cities to which immigrants and black Americans moved. The lack of clean water, sanitation, housing, safety precautions and a government providing regulations on factory owners and slumlords are shocking to read about. Rose met Graham Stokes, and after they married in 1905, became a Socialist activist. I found the story compelling as the author examines the fight for a decent life waged by workers and organizers such as Rose. My own family was living a very different immigrant life a few hundred miles away, where my grandparents had settled in Ohio and by the time my parents were born in the early years of the twentieth century, both maternal and paternal grandparents had small farms which provided a good living for their families. We get a view of the two people, Rose and Graham and their fellow Socialists, and what inspired them to fight and the government and the terrible weapons (police brutality being the most obvious), but they were never able to create great change . It is in retrospect that we can see the vision that drove them. One hundred years later, “Socialism” is an epithet used by Fox News and the Wall Street Journal for any social change efforts to assist the working poor with health care, housing and food.

[Katie Bee · Rating 3 out of 5]

As early as eleven, young Rose Pastor was the breadwinner for her mother and six half-siblings, after her stepfather abandoned them. She toiled in cigar factories, working long hours to provide. In her twenties, she also began writing for a newspaper; this led, in turn, to meeting a privileged scion of the upper classes, J. Graham Phelps Stokes, who lived in and supported a settlement house. Although Rose was Jewish and Graham was Christian (neither devout), which was seen as almost a bigger gulf than their huge class disparity, they fell in love and married. This radical couple were early leaders in the Socialist movement, but over time grew apart, particularly over the First World War and over her birth-control activism.

This book is part political biography of Rose Pastor Stokes, part general political history of the time, and part coverage of the Stokes' "Cinderella romance". The three parts don't always fit seamlessly together. I personally wouldn't have centered the Cinderella aspects quite as much, or billed it as such an "epic" story.

Still, despite the book's unevenness, it's definitely an interesting time period, and Rose is a person I hadn't heard of before and enjoyed learning about.

[John Benson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lately, it seems I have picked up biographies of people I had never heard of before, but I have read many books by Adam Hochshild and felt he would tell Rose Pastor Stokes story well. He brings out the life of this woman, born into poverty into a Jewish family in Poland at the end of the 19th Century and then moving to England and eventually to the US. By the time, she was 16, she was working in a cigar factory in Cleveland to help her family make ends meet. She was able to start writing for a Jewish newspaper and from that she was able to move to New York City. Rose met her future very wealthy husband, Graham Phelps Stoke, as she was interviewing him about his work with settlement houses. After their marriage, they lived in two different worlds with his family's fancy real estate and their involvement with the Socialist party and the labor movement. Rose was a gifted speaker and could rally people easily at labor and party gatherings. As World War I came along, Graham became disenchanted with Socialist ideals while they remained the core of Rose's thinking and the two drifted apart. It is a fascinating story of this person and the times in the labor and political world of the time.

[Peggy Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is fascinating to ponder the ephemeral nature of fame. Rose Pastor Stokes, the author reminds us often, was one of the most famous women of her day because of her fairy tale marriage and radical views. Yet most of us, even those of us who read a lot of history, have never heard of her. Many thanks to Adam Hochschild for bringing her back from the boneyard of history.

Her story and the story of her marriage are a smart vehicle for illuminating this important era in American history. Hochschild uses Rose and Graham aptly to represent their very different classes. The history of radicalism is this country deserves far more attention than it gets, and is especially useful for us in our own Gilded Age.

A fascinating read, highly recommended. One minor quibble: though the Cinderella idea is useful - and, I suppose, appropriate- it trivializes who Rose was and what she tried to accomplish. I found her very real and admirable, and am sorry to see her shackled to anything smacking of Disney princesses.

[Carole · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really interesting biography of Rose Pastor Stokes, a Russian Jewish refugee who came to New York in the early 1900’s, worked in a sweat shop from the age of 11, then as a young woman started writing for a Yiddish language newspaper. She became a Socialist activist and met a wealthy man who, as a Socialist dilettante himself, was attracted to Rose’s firebrand character. They married amid great media frenzy: the « Prince » marrying Cinderella.

The background of the story was very interesting to me. The author describes America, New York in particular, very vividly: the poverty of the ghettos, the terrible factory working conditions, the lifestyle of the obscenely rich. The chapters on World War One and America’s involvement in it were eye-opening.

Although the reader might feel sad at the way so many people in this narrative sacrificed themselves to causes that did not seem to succeed, Hochschild adds an uplifting message about the ways that society has improved due to the efforts of these visionary revolutionaries.

[Judith Slawson King · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I found Adam Hochschild’s account of a socialist Jewish immigrant factory worker marrying into wealth and social prominence engrossing, it occurred to me that the fascinating Rose Parker Stokes narrative is a small canvas compared to the author’s monumental “To End All Wars,” an epic account of WWI focused on the British opponents of a senseless war of unprecedented carnage.

Quick sketches of legendary radicals with whom Rose came into contact are so compelling that their brevity was a disappointment. Rose’s story could have been enfolded in a group portrait of such larger-than-life figures as Eugene V. Debs, Big Bill Haywood, Emma Goldman, Upton Sinclair, John Reed and Lincoln Steffens.

It would be wonderful if Hochschild were to write a book of similar scope to the one covering the years 1914-1918 primarily in Britain about American radicals in the first two decades of the 20th Century.

[Miriam Kahn · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting biography of Rose Pastor Stokes, a Jewish - Russian immigrant who landed first in London, then in Cleveland as sweatshop cigar roller, and finally, in 1903, in NYC. I knew little about her when I started the book, and gained much insight into her passions and the period.

Pastor, after getting involved in the Settlement House movement and Socialist Party, married James Graham Phelps Stokes, heir to one of the blue-blooded American family fortunes.

Through this biography you'll learn gain insight into the early twentieth century, the call for social reform, unions, better working and living conditions, and so much more.

The performance is steady and engaging, drawing listeners into Rose Pastor-Stokes's life and passions. For a review of the performance, see AudioFile Magazine http://www.audiofilemagazine.com

[(a)lyss(a) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book through the Amazon Vine program in exchange for an honest review.

This book was around 3.5 stars for me.

It's an informative and educational read about Rose Pastor Stokes. While I was familiar with the names of some of her peers, like Upton Sinclair and Margaret Sanger, I was surprised I hadn't heard of Rose before. This book recounts what an incredible organizer she was and what a harrowing life she had. She was revolutionary.

It was the writing style that I didn't love as much about this book. With most things written in the present tense and so many details, I found myself wondering how the author could know what someone said exactly, or their inner thoughts about a given situation. It took me out of the book at times, but the story its self was compelling.

It's a bit dense at times but definitely an interesting read!

[Liz Freeland · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book because, even though shelved in the nonfiction section of my bookstore, its cover looked like a historical fiction cover. I'd read King Leopold's Ghost by the same author and thought it was a great history, though very dark and as different from a Cinderella-focused piece of fluff as a book could be.

This book isn't fluff, either, and neither was Rose Pastor Stokes. Her story drops the reader into the Progressive Era, which is usually covered in a paragraph in history books. Rose has the background to make us understand why progressive politics were so attractive to many at the time (and so needed), and her story tracks the rise and fall of leftist politics at the beginning of the twentieth century. It's the story of a Cinderella marriage, but it's also the story of the slow, inevitable unraveling of the fairy tale aspect of blind idealism both in marriage and politics.

[Deena]

DNF at 78% because I just didn't care.

I really don't know what possessed me to try to read this. I loathe the Gilded Age. it was probably the period I hated teaching most when I taught Modern U.S. survey - and that's really saying something. So there was that. Additionally, I didn't care for the people, or care about them. Fanatics are, I think, rarely likable, and in order to get through a book set in the Gilded Age I was going to have to like someone. So there was that, too. Add to that my discomfort with the methodology. If you're going to do due diligence, with academically rigorous research and footnotes, why make it hard for the reader by not putting the note numbers in the text? Oh, because you think it makes the books more marketable? It also makes them look like sloppy work.

I think the real problem is that this just wasn't for me.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is strange that we never heard of Rose Pastor Stokes, a poor Jewish immigrant forced to go to work at 11, who marries into one of the richest and most powerful family in the country. She was a talented writer and speaker who used her husband’s name and fortune to fight for progressive values. She and her husband originally fought for the same issues. She was in awe of his education and he was enamored of her charm and talent. World War 1 put a major stress on their marriage as Rose discovered a passion for Communism and Graham became a super patriot in love with the military.

In a way, this is a very sad book since we are still fighting for the same causes. Child labor may be over but poverty and income inequality is rampant. Rose and Graham’s voices were forgotten. I am glad this book introduced me to Rose.

[chloe-phloe ₊ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmm, I don’t know.
I think Hochschild did a fantastic job of highlighting Rose Pastor Stokes’s relevance, but at times it just felt fake. I wish it drew on how her contemporary impact, if there was any. I really enjoyed reading about discovering her love to speak in front of crowds, sure, but why is this important to now? What’s the significance? Was there a need for a whole book on her?
PFF I’m sorry if I’m making no sense, but I don’t know how to explain it. I’m happy to hear her story—a young woman catapulted into No-Man’s Land with each side pulling at her—but I feel like I kinda learned nothing lol other than that society has been weighing in on the large wealth gap for a very long time.
So I’m going to treat this like a fiction book instead of a non-fiction one: my favorite character is young Graham, not the grumpy old one obviously.

[Spencer Ellsworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adam Hochschild never misses in his histories of the Progressive Era. This one overlaps a bit with To End All Wars and some of his other work, but from a different biographical lens. Rosa Pastor Stokes has a genuine rags-to-riches change when she meets her extremely wealthy husband Graham in one of the community centers he sponsors. As rich as she is, she still leans hard left and is radical in her politics, and of course, those two worlds don't mesh well. He stops short of writing her thoughts or dialogue but he does speculate on how she might have felt or what she may have done in private. He perfectly shows the details about the cigar factory where she works, the mansion grounds of the Stokes, and all the trappings of this world. Hochschild made Rosa come alive, more than a lot of fictional characters I've read.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

An intriguing narrative about the life of a woman I’d not heard about and her marriage and life’s work as socialist, communist, and pacifist. Her story is told against the background of the rise if socialism in the first gilded age, World War I, and the Russian revolution. The focus is kept on Rose with due space given to Graham.

While some of the WW I information was known to me, I learned much as well. I had not made the connection between the pacifist movement and socialism’s doctrine that the working class should unite across national borders and not fight each other. Nor had I known that after the Russian revolution, Russia had ended participation in WW I.

An interesting read with a dose of history.

[Julie Greene · Rating 2 out of 5]

Charming book in many ways, but that's not enough. Rose Pastor Stokes seems mostly here to provide a device allowing Hochschild to tell poignant stories of social and labor protest in the early 20th century. The stories are not new and few illuminating insights are shared. If you've never read a book about turn of the 20th century social protest, and if you like your history to be a light read, this one is entertaining and pleasant enough. Hochschild is a fine writer and storyteller. If you want true insight into the period, there are so many better books. Look for work by historians like Nan Enstad, Annelise Orleck, Susan Glenn, Christine Stansell, Richard Greenwald, Daniel Katz, James Green, etc.