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Them: A Memoir of Parents
by Du Plessix Gray, Francine
- Used
- Fine
- Hardcover
- Signed
- first
- Condition
- Fine/Fine
- ISBN 10
- 1594200491
- ISBN 13
- 9781594200496
- Seller
-
Templeton, California, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: Penguin Press HC, The, 2005. Book. Fine. Hardcover. Signed by Author(s). 1st Edition. First printing with complete number line down to 1. Signed by the author on the title page.The text block is solid, clean and square. Endpapers are clear of markings with NO previous owner's signature. Spine is stiff and appears unread, boards rigid and tips pointed. The dust jacket is NOT price clipped and has no tears or fray, though bit of shelf wear here and there on near edges. Looks dashing in its shiny new plastic cover. Shipping box is suitable for wrapping with a non-price listed purchase order inside along with biodegradable packing..
Synopsis
Tatiana du Plessix, the wife of a French diplomat, was a beautiful, sophisticated "white Russian" who had been the muse of the famous Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. Alexander Liberman, the ambitious son of a prominent Russian Jew, was a gifted magazine editor and aspiring artist. As part of the progressive artistic Russian émigré community living in Paris in the 1930s, the two were destined to meet. They began a passionate affair, and the year after Paris was occupied in World War II they fled to New York with Tatiana's young daughter, Francine. There they determinedly rose to the top of high society, holding court to a Who's Who list of the midcentury's intellectuals and entertainers. Flamboyant and outrageous, bold and brilliant, they were irresistible to friends like Marlene Dietrich, Salvador Dalí, and the publishing tycoon Condé Nast. But to those who knew them well they were also highly neurotic, narcissistic, and glacially self-promoting, prone to cut out of their lives, with surgical precision, close friends who were no longer of use to them. Tatiana became an icon of New York fashion, and the hats she designed for Saks Fifth Avenue were de rigueur for stylish women everywhere. Alexander Liberman, who devotedly raised Francine as his own child from the time she was nine, eventually came to preside over the entire Condé Nast empire. The glamorous life they shared was both creative and destructive and was marked by an exceptional bond forged out of their highly charged love and raging self-centeredness. Their obsessive adulation of success and elegance was elevated to a kind of worship, and the high drama that characterized their lives followed them to their deaths. Tatiana, increasingly consumed with nostalgia for a long-lost Russia, spent her last years addicted to painkillers. Shortly after her death, Alexander, then age eighty, shocked all who knew him by marrying her nurse. Them: A Portrait of Parents is a beautifully written homage to the extraordinary lives of two fascinating, irrepressible people who were larger than life emblems of a bygone age. Written with honesty and grace by the person who knew them best, this generational saga is a survivor's story. Tatiana and Alexander survived the Russian Revolution, the fall of France, and New York's factory of fame. Their daughter, Francine, survived them.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Winding Road Books
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 001196
- Title
- Them: A Memoir of Parents
- Author
- Du Plessix Gray, Francine
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Fine
- Jacket Condition
- Fine
- Edition
- 1st Edition
- ISBN 10
- 1594200491
- ISBN 13
- 9781594200496
- Publisher
- Penguin Press HC, The
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2005
- Keywords
- Autobiography
Terms of Sale
Winding Road Books
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
Winding Road Books
Biblio member since 2019
Templeton, California
About Winding Road Books
Specialize in Psychology, First Editions, Speculative Fiction
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
- Text Block
- Most simply the inside pages of a book. More precisely, the block of paper formed by the cut and stacked pages of a book....
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- Shelf Wear
- Shelf wear (shelfwear) describes damage caused over time to a book by placing and removing a book from a shelf. This damage is...
- Number Line
- A series of numbers appearing on the copyright page of a book, where the lowest number generally indicates the printing of that...
- Price Clipped
- When a book is described as price-clipped, it indicates that the portion of the dust jacket flap that has the publisher's...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Title Page
- A page at the front of a book which may contain the title of the book, any subtitles, the authors, contributors, editors, the...
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