The Dancer, the Dreamers, and the Queen of Romania: How an Unlikely Quartet Created America's Most Improbable Art Museum
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Narrated by:
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Sarah Snow
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By:
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Steve Wiegand
About this listen
The Maryhill Museum of Art is located on 5,300 acres in the Columbia River Gorge. Miles from any sizeable town and surrounded by the gorge's spectacular scenery, Maryhill is an internationally recognized - and undeniably eclectic - repository of art that ranges from one of the nation's best Rodin collections to one of the world's largest assemblage of chess sets. It is, as The New York Times once described it, "oddly fitting - it brought the better works of man near one of the better works of nature."
Dancer, Dreamers, and the Queen of Romania is the story of the four widely disparate people whose lives intertwined in such a way as to lay the foundation for the museum. Loie Fuller was once the world's most famous dancer, who dreamed of becoming beautiful by creating beauty. Alma Spreckels was one of America's wealthiest women, who dreamed of being accepted for who she wanted to be rather than who she was. Sam Hill was a rich man who dreamed of becoming a great man. And Marie of Romania was a real-life queen who dreamed of being a fairy-tale queen.
And it is the story of those who followed them. These people nurtured and grew Maryhill from a fascinating oddity that Time magazine once called "a top hat in the jungle" to one of the relatively few U.S. museums accredited in every category by the American Alliance of Museums.
This is an audiobook that will appeal to rlisteners who like both biography and history, and will have particular appeal, but by no means be limited to, Western U.S. and Pacific Northwest audiences. It is "side-street" history in the tradition of Boys in the Boat, Unbroken, or Dead Wake. It will appeal to art lovers. It will also appeal to everyone who has visited or just passed by an inviting-but-oddly-located museum and wondered how it got there and who keeps it going.
This heretofore untold and remarkable story is narrated by a master wordsmith and historian. Steve Wiegand is the author or co-author of numerous books, including U.S. History for Dummies (Wiley), the 4th edition of which will be out in March 2019; Lessons from the Great Depression for Dummies (Wiley, 2009); The Mental Floss History of the World (Collins, 2008) and Papers of Permanence: The First 150 Years of the McClatchy Company (McClatchy, 2007).
Wiegand spent 35 years as a newspaper reporter and columnist for the San Diego Union-Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and Sacramento Bee, and has published in numerous magazines and periodicals.
©2020 Steve Wiegand (P)2020 Bancroft PressListeners also enjoyed...
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Performance
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The Cartiers is the revealing tale of a jewelry dynasty—four generations, from revolutionary France to the 1970s. At its heart are the three Cartier brothers whose motto was “Never copy, only create” and who made their family firm internationally famous in the early days of the twentieth century, thanks to their unique and complementary talents.
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Wonderful Experience to Listen to This Story
- By BB on 01-12-20
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Captive of the Labyrinth
- Sarah L. Winchester, Heiress to the Rifle Fortune
- By: Mary Jo Ignoffo
- Narrated by: Nan McNamara
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The first full-length biography of Sarah Winchester, the subject of the movie Winchester starring Helen Mirren, now available for the first time in audio. Since her death in 1922, Sarah Winchester has been perceived as a mysterious, haunted figure. After inheriting a vast fortune upon the death of her husband in 1881, Sarah purchased a simple farmhouse in San José, California. She began building additions to the house and continued construction on it for the next twenty years. A hostile press cast Sarah as the conscience of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company—a widow shouldering responsibility for the many deaths caused by the rifle that brought her riches. She was accused of being a ghost-obsessed spiritualist, and to this day it is largely believed that the extensive construction she executed on her San José house was done to appease the ghouls around her. But was she really as guilt-ridden and superstitious as history remembers her? When Winchester’s home was purchased after her death, it was transformed into a tourist attraction. The bizarre, sprawling mansion and the enigmatic nature of Winchester’s life were exaggerated by the new owners to generate publicity for their business. But as the mansion has become more widely known, the person of Winchester has receded from reality, and she is only remembered for squandering her riches to ward off disturbed spirits.
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Facts to Silence the Myths
- By Carmen Gibson on 03-07-24
By: Mary Jo Ignoffo
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The Chief
- The Life of William Randolph Hearst
- By: David Nasaw
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 30 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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William Randolph Hearst, known to his staff as the "Chief", was a brilliant business strategist and a man of prodigious appetites. By the 1930s, he controlled the largest publishing empire in the United States, including 28 newspapers, the Cosmopolitan Picture Studio, radio stations, and 13 magazines. He quickly learned how to use this media stronghold to achieve unprecedented political power. In The Chief, David Nasaw presents an intimate portrait of the man famously characterized in the classic film Citizen Kane.
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Fascinating but
- By Michael on 02-17-22
By: David Nasaw
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The Man in the Glass House
- Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century
- By: Mark Lamster
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning architectural critic and biographer Mark Lamster's The Man in the Glass House lifts the veil on Johnson's controversial and endlessly contradictory life to tell the story of a charming yet deeply flawed man. A roller-coaster tale of the perils of wealth, privilege, and ambition, this book probes the dynamics of American culture that made him so powerful and tells the story of the built environment in modern America.
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Disappointing!
- By David G Dempsey on 07-12-19
By: Mark Lamster
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"The Rest of Us"
- The Rise of America's Eastern European Jews
- By: Stephen Birmingham
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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The wave of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who swept into New York in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by way of Ellis Island were not welcomed by the Jews who had arrived decades before. These refugees from czarist Russia and the Polish shtetls who came to America to escape pogroms and persecution were considered barbaric, uneducated, and too steeped in the traditions of the "old country" to be accepted by the more refined and already well-established German-Jewish community. But the new arrivals were tough, passionate, and determined.
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Book 3 of 3
- By Etoile NEOhio on 11-15-22
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Self Made
- Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker
- By: A'Lelia Bundles
- Narrated by: A'Lelia Bundles
- Length: 16 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The daughter of slaves, Madam C.J. Walker was orphaned at seven, married at 14, and widowed at 20. She spent the better part of the next two decades laboring as a washerwoman for $1.50 a week. Then - with the discovery of a revolutionary hair care formula for Black women - everything changed. By her death in 1919, Walker managed to overcome astonishing odds: Building a storied beauty empire from the ground up that would be run by four generations of Walker women until its sale in 1985.
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Please read the book and not rely on the Netflix series
- By Sweet Pea's Mommy on 04-27-20
By: A'Lelia Bundles
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Empty Mansions
- The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune
- By: Bill Dedman, Paul Clark Newell Jr.
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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When Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly 60 years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the 19th century with a 21st-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades.
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Fascinating, But Know This...
- By Karen K on 04-08-15
By: Bill Dedman, and others
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Paris, City of Dreams
- Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann, and the Creation of Paris
- By: Mary McAuliffe
- Narrated by: Tim H. Dixon
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed historian Mary McAuliffe vividly recaptures the Paris of Napoleon III, Claude Monet, and Victor Hugo as Georges Haussmann tore down and rebuilt Paris into the beautiful City of Light we know today. Paris, City of Dreams traces the transformation of the City of Light during Napoleon III’s Second Empire into the beloved city of today.
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Superb
- By Cheri Stocking on 02-17-23
By: Mary McAuliffe
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The Earl and the Pharaoh
- From the Real Downton Abbey to the Discovery of Tutankhamun
- By: The Countess of Carnarvon
- Narrated by: The Countess of Carnarvon
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Bestselling author the Countess of Carnarvon tells the thrilling behind-the-scenes story of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun on its centennial, and explores the unparalleled life of family ancestor George Herbert—the famed Egyptologist, world-traveler, and 5th Earl of Carnarvon behind it—whose country house, Highclere Castle, is the setting of the beloved series Downton Abbey.
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Plodding Family History…Akin to Listening to Paint Dry
- By J. Willis-Opalenik on 10-31-23
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Emily Post
- Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners
- By: Laura Claridge
- Narrated by: Christine Williams
- Length: 18 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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From the excesses of the late 19th-century Gilded Age, through the horrors of World War I, to the transformations of the Roaring 20s that gave birth to her magisterial Etiquette, Emily Post unfailingly took the measure of her era. A Baltimore blue blood with a populist heart, she helped the masses live the American dream with her hugely popular book, which has been continuously in print for over 85 years.
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Typical for Emily Post
- By Stephanie on 01-07-19
By: Laura Claridge
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Prince Charles
- The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life
- By: Sally Bedell Smith
- Narrated by: Rosalyn Landor, Sally Bedell Smith
- Length: 18 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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From the New York Times best-selling author of Elizabeth the Queen comes the first major biography of Prince Charles in more than 20 years - perfect for fans of The Crown. Sally Bedell Smith returns once again to the British royal family to give us a new look at Prince Charles, the oldest heir to the throne in more than 300 years.
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Diana dissed at every chance
- By Ray Y on 09-12-17
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Bunny Mellon
- The Life of an American Style Legend
- By: Meryl Gordon
- Narrated by: Vanessa Cortland
- Length: 17 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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A new biography of Bunny Mellon, the style icon and American aristocrat who designed the White House Rose Garden for her friend JFK and served as a living witness to 20th century American history, operating in the high-level arenas of politics, diplomacy, art, and fashion.
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Well written bio.
- By Minda Leah Kahn on 09-01-18
By: Meryl Gordon
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The Rothschilds
- A Family Portrait
- By: Frederic Morton
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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No family in the past two centuries has been as constantly at the center of Europe's great events, has featured such varied and spectacular personalities, has had anything close to the wealth of the Rothschilds. To this day they remain one of the most powerful and wealthy families in the world. In Frederic Morton's classic tale, the family is brought vividly to life.
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Engaging read but dubious sentiment
- By T.G. on 04-23-20
By: Frederic Morton
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When Paris Sizzled
- The 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Chanel, Cocteau, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and Their Friends
- By: Mary McAuliffe
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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When Paris Sizzled vividly portrays the City of Light during the fabulous 1920s, les Annees folles, when Parisians emerged from the horrors of war to find that a new world greeted them - one that reverberated with the hard metallic clang of the assembly line, the roar of automobiles, and the beat of jazz. Mary McAuliffe traces a decade that saw seismic change on almost every front, from art and architecture to music, literature, fashion, entertainment, transportation, and, most notably, behavior.
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Informative, but no sizzle
- By OzEnigma on 06-01-17
By: Mary McAuliffe
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Supreme City
- How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America
- By: Donald L. Miller
- Narrated by: Frangione Jim
- Length: 29 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In four words - "the capital of everything" - Duke Ellington captured Manhattan during one of the most exciting and celebrated eras in our history: The Jazz Age. Radio, tabloid newspapers, and movies with sound appeared. The silver screen took over Times Square as Broadway became America's movie mecca. Tremendous new skyscrapers were built in Midtown in one of the greatest building booms in history.
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the background to the NYC we now live in
- By Marcie on 03-05-15
By: Donald L. Miller