All We Know Pdf Summary Reviews By Lisa Cohen

All We Know Pdf Summary

A revelatory biography of three glamorous, complex, modern women

Esther Murphy was a brilliant New York intellectual who dazzled friends and strangers with an unstoppable flow of conversation. But she never finished the books she was contracted to write—a painful failure and yet a kind of achievement.

The quintessential fan, Mercedes de Acosta had intimate friendships with the legendary actresses and dancers of the twentieth century. Her ephemeral legacy is the thousands of objects she collected to preserve the memory of those performers and to document her own feelings.

An icon of haute couture and a fashion editor of British Vogue, Madge Garland held influential views on dress that drew on her feminism, her ideas about modernity, and her love of women. Existing both vividly and invisibly at the center of culture, she—like Murphy and de Acosta—is now almost completely forgotten.

In All We Know, Lisa Cohen describes these women’s glamorous choices, complicated failures, and controversial personal lives with lyricism and empathy. At once a series of intimate portraits and a startling investigation into style, celebrity, sexuality, and the genre of biography itself, All We Know explores a hidden history of modernism and pays tribute to three compelling lives.

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All We Know Review

gammyjill

TOP 500 REVIEWER

4.0 out of 5 stars Was it the times or their sexual preferences?
Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2012

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Wesleyan University professor Lisa Cohen has written a group biography about three women – now mostly forgotten – who were born late in the 19th-century but influenced the arts in the first half of the 20th century. Two were Americans and the other was born in Australia but lived in England from the age of two. All were lesbians; while not partners, they moved in the same “circles” in New York, London, and Paris.

I finished the book – which is very well-written – asking myself why these three women were chosen as subjects for a book. Esther Murphy, the daughter of Mark Cross owner Patrick Murphy, was in some respects pitiable. Raised in luxury, she was a “searcher” for knowledge, life experience and social acceptance. (She was the younger sister of artist Gerald Murphy and the sister-in-law of Sara Murphy. There have been a couple of excellent biographies of the Murphys which talk about their leaving provincial America after WW1 to find a life of art in Paris and the Riviera in the 20’s and 30’s. In my opinion, they were far more interesting subjects than sister Esther.) Esther, who was denied the advanced education she badly wanted – as were the other two subjects – was a sort of dilettante. She researched and began a couple of books on French aristocrats that remained unfinished at her death. She had affairs with other women but for social reasons, married a man briefly. Did Esther Murphy accomplish anything in her life? Or was she on the periphery of the artistic circles she longed to belong to; a wanna-be writer who was known more for her “talk” than her “action”?

The second subject – Mercedes de Acosta – was also from a wealthy, stylish family in New York. Also gay, she was known for the affairs she had – or wanted to have – with actresses and other creative women. Her section of the book was the shortest. The longest and most interesting part of the book was devoted to Madge Garland, an early editor of British Vogue and a leading light in the world of fashion in London and Paris from the 1920’s through the 1960’s. Lisa Cohen really shines when writing about Madge Garland. In fact, the entire book could have easily been devoted to Garland and her life and times and influences. What “influenced” her and what she turned around and “influenced”.

All three women were lesbians at a time when being gay was both a curse socially and a hindrance in the job market. All three married for the social cover a married name provided. But all lived their lives fairly openly within their own social group, while being much more circumspect in larger society. Cohen does a pretty good job at choosing the three women’s sexual orientation as binding them together as subjects of a joint biography. But, I’d have rather read a book where the first two – Murphy and de Acosta – were less the subject and that most of the biography was devoted to Garland.

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4.0 out of 5 stars “Each lived imagining what should, or might, or could never be saved or jettisoned.
Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2012

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Each of these three women have receded in popular memory, and it is exactly this loss of fame which has attracted Lisa Cohen. Esther Murphy lived and conversed with many of the transcendent minds of her time in the first half of the 20th century. She started many a monologue with “all we know” and proceeded to share the extensive research and thought on a particular subject. Her passion was Madame de Maintenant whose biography she never finished. Mercedes de Acosta was the perhaps the prototype fan. She was obsessed with Garbo with whom she had a short affair. But her gift was in the appreciation and promotion of talent as she found it. Finally Madge Garland, a pivotal founder of British Vogue. She was linked with the Bloomsbury group and enmeshed the magazine with their creation as people of fashion and their contributions to the magazine. Huxley once asked her, “Are you dressed like that because you’re on Vogue, or are you on Vogue, or are you on Vogue because you’re dressed like that?”

This book is one Publisher’s Weekly’s top 10 books of 2012. In “All We Know”, we see a history of modernism as seen by three women who lived at a time that the contributions of women were often considered to be correctly in the unsung category. All three were gay and had their lives judged in that light often to their detriment. All three were touched by alcohol in an era of the great social experiment. Temperance failed to the point that alcohol became key in the lives of public figures. Lisa Cohen has strived to make their lives visible again. This book then, in part, is a philosophical exercise in the examination of the person who left accomplishment rather than fame.

The writing is rich and draws a detailed view of a world of women in the twenties. We can well visualize these women and the people around them. While Cohen has a view to impart, she avoids preaching. We already know much about the world of the famous in which these women moved. It is a gift to learn about the “fifteen minutes” of women who contributed and then were largely forgotten.

About Lisa Cohen Author Of All We Know pdf Book

Lisa Cohen
Lisa Cohen

Cohen Author Of All We Know pdf Book grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Philadelphia and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in international relations and French.

At “PrimeTime Live” and then at “60 Minutes II,” Cohen produced reports for Diane Sawyer, Sam Donaldson, Peter Jennings, Cynthia McFadden and others, on topics as diverse as the right to bear arms, have abortions and exercise the death penalty. She has covered some of the biggest moments in recent history including the TWA 800 crash, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the September 11 terror attacks. Her 1996 one-hour documentary for ABC News PrimeTime Live, “Judgment at Midnight,” won multiple awards, including the NATAS Emmy; CINE Golden Eagle; International Film and Television Award; and the Foundation of American Women in Radio and Television “Gracie” award.

Cohen first learned about Etan’s unsolved case while working at “PrimeTime Live.” She subsequently produced several pieces on the story for network television before writing After Etan, which is her first book. Her book, After Etan: The Missing Child Case that Held America Captive, was published by Grand Central Publishing May 7, 2009.

In addition to writing After Etan, Cohen in 2010 began directing and producing “Serving Life” for the Oprah Winfrey Network, executive produced by Forest Whitaker. The documentary follows a group of inmates at Louisiana’s Angola state penitentiary, who staff the inmate hospice there.

Cohen is also a media consultant, and she teaches journalism/television production at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She was also a Princeton University Ferris Professor of Journalism.

She is a regular contributor to Women in Crime Ink,  described by the Wall Street Journal as “a blog worth reading.

She is married and lives in New York City.

All We Know pdf, Paperback, Hardcover Book Information

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (July 17, 2012)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0374176493
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0374176495
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.39 x 1.46 x 9.18 inches
  • Best Sellers Rank: #2,827,506 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #3,199 in LGBTQ+ Biographies (Books)
  • #13,730 in Author Biographies
  • #26,768 in Women’s Biographies
  • Customer Reviews: 4.1 out of 5 stars    37 ratings

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