Edna Ferber, perhaps one of the least-known and underappreciated novelists in American history, writes her autobiography during the time of Hitler. This book gives glimpses of the rumors coming backj to America about Hitler's Germany (this book was written in the 1930's; Ferber wrote a sequel autobiography after the war which displays great bitterness about the events in Central Europe during the 1940's). No doubt the title is taken from the Old Testament, when the Israelites are chosen to be "a peculiar people." Ferber was indeed a peculiar treasure in the literary world, but an enjoyable treasure to read. In this book, Ferber recounts how she started as a reporter or the Appleton Post-Crescent (once even interviewing Harry Houdini, a fellow Appleton, WI, native ands fellow Jew). She also relates her trials as one of the first female reporters for the Milwaukee, WI, Journal and her rise as a novelist. For aspiring writers (like myself), Edna tells how she goes about writing and the regimen she maintained to write her books.

I bought this reprint because of the James Montgomery Flagg illustrations, but I enjoyed the story a great deal. Emma is a "drummer" in her mid-30s, an agent to retail stores throughout the Midwest of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company. She's a woman in what was, before the Great War, decidedly a man's world, but she beats most of them at it all hollow. She's claimed to be the first businesswoman in American literature and she serves as a mouthpiece for Ferber's feminist politics and her Progressive attitude toward the commercial world. This was the first of three collections (all made up of stories serialized in magazines) and they were immensely popular in their day -- especially with women, though Theodore Roosevelt was a fan. too. In fact, Emma was Ferber's first real hit and paved the way for her prolific later career. The style, of course, tends somewhat to effusive overwriting, but you get the same in almost any popular literature written at the turn of the century. Good stuff!

One of my gripes with modern "great literature" is the omnipresent dysfunctional family. Well, this book is seventy years old and goes to prove that wacky families are nothing new in literature. It includes the last of the Oakes clan - early Yankee settlers who are now running away to the circus, crazy or simple. They can't farm their own land so enter the Polish immigrants. What follows is a clash of cultures, bigotry and a little romance.

While the plot could be part of contemporary fiction, it is the tone and style that sets this book apart. Some of the writing would not pass any political correctness test. Still, in other ways there is a gentle and calm quality that makes this book quite readable.

The good/bad part of the book is that my book group all agreed on it. We found it a pleasant window into a world that was fairly interesting. Still, it didn't incite much passion in any of us, let alone providing any juicy meat for disagreement.

"True" Baldwin, an aging millionaire, is ordered by his doctor to get out of the Chicago after the 1929 stock market crash takes a toll on his health. His daughter takes him for a drive to Connecticut to visit his birthplace. When True last knew the place, it was a rural farm land that was known for its crops of tobacco. Still having money, he is interested in purchasing a farm house and taking up farming.

True remembers his lost love, Judy Oakes. The Oakes were a historic family -- having owned the largest plantation in the county. However, Judy is long dead but her majestic house still stands. Ferber takes the reader into a long journey into the past concerning the history of this domicile. The story starts in 1700, with some of the first Americans to settle in the area. It covers the growth and struggles of the people there: their interaction with Indians, the harsh winters, and taming the land.

Ferber has done her homework and appears to know the ins and outs of tobacco farming. She also knows the mores and living conditions of the Polish farmers. The primary focus of the book is a love story set in the late 1890's. Judy's adopted niece (a reincarnation of an Oakes who died from exposure in the 1700's) and her hired Polish man, Ondy, fall in love and try to continue the Oakes' family line.

The book was interesting and I found myself absorbed. The characters are colorful and add charm to this book. It certainly wasn't action packed and there wasn't much as far as suspense, but it caught my fancy. I think the book has historical and social interest and I learned about what it must have been like to live in the late 1800's on a Connecticut tobacco farm. The title appears to come from the appreciation of all the events that went into making the Oakes' mansion. Ferber's clear writing is similar to Ellen Glasgow without the feminist overtone.

As a great fan of George S. Kaufman (especially of his works co-written with Moss Hart), I was very much looking forward to reacquainting myself with his earlier comedies co-written with Edna Ferber. Unfortunately, this book has to be the most poorly proofread and mis-edited mass market text I've ever seen. My guess is that the text was scanned in using OCR software. A tremendous number of words make no sense in their context or are not even real words at all. Frequently, words will have capital letters, symbols, or numbers randomly inserted into the middle of them. Punctuation is erratic, with numerous periods in the midst of words or within sentences. The result is that the text is a chore to read, and the typesetting almost ruins these otherwise interesting plays. My advice is that, if you have access to the three plays in another volume, read them there; you'll enjoy the experience more. This is really an amateurish product that does disservice to the creativity of two fine pros.

I was told that the play "The Royal Family" would be hilariously funny. I must say, it seemed somehow outdated and the jokes were not funny at all. I do not understand Tony's character. The character development is poor, except for the authors' development of Fanny Cavendish. Don't bother reading through this waste of words!

I am a fan of both authors, Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman. They wrote beautiful plays together that are particularly charming! Royal Family is a great play that I am currently in as the character Gwen so I have explored the show quite well. I highly recommend this collection of plays to anyone who enjoys humor and drama! Thanks for reading :)

Is there a renaissance of interest in the writings of Edna Ferber? Stamps were minted honoring her this past summer [2002], and now the reissuance of this biography, written by Ferber's greatniece and originally published about 1978. I hope this indicates a resurgence of interest in her writings -- but you would be better served to read Ferber's writings themselves, than this biography.

I've been in love with the writings of Enda Ferber since I was 12 and someone gave me a used edition of "Amreican Beauty". I realize that she won't go down in the annals of the classics of American literature, such as Faulkner or even Carson McCullers: her writing lacks the quality of universality, and I suppose, self-discovery [on the reader's part]. But she is great at the sociology of America, at giving the reader an intuitive feel or understanding of an era or people. I even did my first term paper in high school on her: "The Effects of Minority Races on the Writing of Edna Ferber" -- and I still remember with pleasure the note the instructor wrote, to the effect that my love for Ferber's writings was apparent.

So although I had read reviews to the effect that Ms. Gilbert did not let her closeness to her aunt affect her objectivity, I couldn't resist reading it. I was prepared for her to be critical. I was not prepared for her to be vindictive and viperish. She related Ferber's life backwards: 1960 to 1968, 1952 to 1960, 1938 to 1950, 1916 to 1938, etc. -- so you begin by seeing her as a crochety old lady [and indeed, this was the bulk of the book, rather than the period in which Ferber was writing -- although I suppose it is understandable, as that is when Ms. Gilbert would have known her] without having any idea what made her that way.

What did come out was that Miss Ferber took over of the support of her extended family [besides her mother: her sister, her sister's 2 children, and their children] -- and that the family felt some guilt at this, and I felt Ms. Gilbert's book was an attempt to whitewash the family's guilt, saying in effect, "See, it wasn't easy for us, we had to put up with this disagreeable old lady." When she sticks to facts, it isn't too bad; but she's always jumping to pseudo-freudian conclusions, or attaching a moralistic interpretation to the actions of others. For example, although she quotes letters of praise from Noel Coward [who was not a person to suffer fools gladly] fairly frequently, she usually adds that the work "wasn't Ferber's best" [I wonder what she did feel was her best?] and that he undoubtedly did it out of friendship. She makes numerous allusions to a freudian problem which Miss Ferber had in her relationship with her mother, but during her tale of the early part of Ferber's life, never mentions anything to provide support or justification for such comments. If someone outside the family had written it, I'm sure they would be subject to a lawsuit for libel and inneundo.

The biography is entitled "Ferber and her Circle", but is only tangentially about her "circle".

This book is typical of an Edna Ferber novel--good details of the respective time period, but little insight or depth of characters. Half of the novel concerns Barney Glasgow, a poor child of immigrants who grows up in the lumberjack world. Determined never to be poor again, he sets his sights on becoming a wealthy man in the lumber industry. With the aid of his boss, Hewitt, he circumvents the law in taking land that in his opinion screams "Come and get it". His ambition causes him to sacrifice his love for a woman, a saloon singer and ex-prostitute nine years his senior named Lotta Morgan. Instead, he marries his boss' spinster daughter to gain partnership and inherit his boss' business. He gets his comeuppance thirty years later when he falls for the very beautiful granddaughter of the woman he loved (who eventually married his best friend Swan Bostrom). Lotta Lindbeck is eighteen, smart and has the same ruthless ambition as Barney. She entices Barney, who lavishes his wealth on her, but she also sees Barney's grown son, Bernie, on the side. She chooses Bernie over his father and marries him, when Barney and other members of his family die in an accident. The next half of the book describes Lotta's life as a socialite. It gives good detail on what was considered luxury then and the commonfolk's lifestyle in Wisconsin.

The book loses momentum as it solely describes Lotta's life with Bernie and doesn't bother with creating tension or describing the feelings or psychology of its characters. The film by the same name ends with the scene when Lotta disses Barney and leaves with Bernie, which was appropriate, since filming the second half of the book would've been pointless and would've made the audience drowsy. Ferber should've made the book center on one character, and eliminated the chapters detailing the lifstyles of the rich and famous during the turn-of-the-century. The book was about Barney and she should've focused her attention on him (Lotta was a dull frivolous character). The point of it is, afterall, about how being blindly ambitious in attaining one's goal, by sacrificing personal happiness can cause regrets later in life, when the advantages of being young are gone.

P.S. In case you saw the movie or plan to see it, Lotta Lindbeck is named Lotta Bostrom, and she is less innocent and more calculating in the book. Lotta Morgan, her grandmother, was no great beauty. And Kari Lindbeck, Lotta's mother, is portrayed as Lotta's aunt. I guess the producers wanted to narrow the age difference between Lotta and Barney and thus made Lotta as Lotta Morgan's daughter. The film claims Barney was 50 when he meets the teenage Lotta, but in the book he's actually 57. The film was great, with Frances Farmer playing the two Lottas. She fits the physical description of Lotta Bostrom (Lindbeck) perfectly.

ICE PALACE is probably a teenage girl's novel, as the main character is a young woman "coming of age". The pedantic "facts about Alaska" would also probably be better tolerated by a young reader, accustomed to the style from school books. However, the book was apparently written in the 1950s, and many of the facts, as well as expressions are dated. As a middle aged male, I found the novel to be weak, and I could not recommend it to another adult.