Biased Bibliophile Review of Greed in The Gilded Age The Brilliant Con of Cassie Chadwick

Very rarely do I use the word “perfect” to describe a book, but Greed in the Gilded Age by William Elliott Hazelgrove certainly comes close! A very special thank you to William for sending me a signed copy of this wonderful book! I can’t wait to read your next book! Greed in the Gilded Age describes the story of Cassie Chadwick, aka Elizabeth Bigley, who pulled off multiple outrageous cons in the late 1800s and early 1900s, amounting in about $2 million of stolen money, which is equivalent to over $60 million today. I absolutely loved everything about this book! First off, the story is extremely compelling on its own, but we all know that even nonfiction is not objective, and Hazelgrove tells Chadwick’s story in a captivating and enchanting way. Perhaps the detail I appreciated most in the story is Hazelgrove’s depiction of Cassie. Yes, she is certainly a con artist and criminal, but in a time where there was a very narrow margin between legitimately wealthy people and criminals, the narrative truly makes readers question where Cassie actually falls on that continuum. Criminal? More than likely. But also clearly brilliant and innovative. The way in which Hazelgrove tells the story leaves the reader wondering, “Was Cassie really wrong for trying to make something of her life?” We can obviously see that she crossed some lines, but when her actions are juxtaposed by those of Andrew Carnegie, we start to wonder what it is that morphs someone from legitimate to criminal. By the end of the novel, I felt as though Cassie partially got what she deserved, but I was also left with a somewhat mystical admiration of her too. Additionally, Hazelgrove frequently referenced women’s positions in society at the time Cassie lived. This aspect is vital to the story, as many of us cannot comprehend some of the gender differences between then and now. I was also quite happy that Hazelgrove makes small suggestions that point towards sexism linked to Cassie’s case. For instance, the way in which many people assumed a man must have been helping Cassie, or the likelihood that many of the parties involved did not want to give an accurate depiction of what happened, purely out of embarrassment from being duped by a woman. These details were not only key to the overall narrative, they also gave women credit where credit was due, which is not the case with all nonfiction authors. Finally, Hazelgrove frequently provided context to other events going on during Cassie’s life. Some nonfiction books treat their topics as though they exist in a vacuum, which is detrimental to conveying a complete understanding to the readers. However, Hazelgrove does the opposite, and provides relevant and interesting information about events that occurred during Chadwick’s life. From background information on Andrew Carnegie, to information about the Wright brothers, to details about Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency. Hazelgrove gave such a comprehensive narration of Cassie Chadwick’s life, and it would not have been so complete without the additional information he provided. Overall, the story of Cassie Chadwick’s life is interesting on its own, but William Hazelgrove has given it new depth through his thoroughness and talent with situating a story in history. I am never hesitant to admit that I’m quite picky when it comes to reading nonfiction, simply because nonfiction can become boring in the wrong hands. History is an important treasure that we should all treat as valuable, and some nonfiction authors simply don’t seem to have the passion to convey that value to readers. On the opposite end of that spectrum we have authors like William Elliott Hazelgrove, who clearly make it a point to convey the value of history in any narrative they tell. I may be a picky reader, but Hazelgrove certainly has one lifelong reader in me!

Library Journal Review of Greed in the Gilded Age

Hazelgrove (Sally Rand: American Sex Symbol) chronicles the life and crimes of Cassie Chadwick, who, during the Gilded Age, scammed bankers out of millions of dollars, causing one bank failure and leading to the death of the head of a bank. Chadwick convinced prominent bankers, attorneys, and a reverend that she was the illegitimate daughter of industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie; she even dropped by Carnegie's home to pretend to retrieve promissory notes. When her scam came to light, she was prosecuted; the ensuing trial generated so much press that Carnegie himself sat in to observe. Hazelgrove vividly sets the scene, drawing intriguing parallels and contrasts between Carnegie and Chadwick—Carnegie ruthlessly punished striking workers who were protesting unsafe working conditions, while Chadwick broke the law in the pursuit of wealth, yet only Chadwick was held accountable. The delightfully sensationalist writing ("questions that rained down like nails into his soul") evokes the yellow journalism of the era. VERDICT Readers curious about the Gilded Age or who enjoy stories of con artists will appreciate Hazelgrove's lively tale of a most ambitious grifter.—Karen Sandlin Silverman Library Journal

WHY THE GILDED AGE STILL FASCINATES US

It was a time of a enormous change for one thing. Untaxed money for another. And there were villans and robber barons and there was Cassie Chadwick. She was a con woman who claimed to be the illigitimate daughter of Andrew Carnegie and she lived on millions for years before the police caught up to her and she was tried for conspiracy to defraud a bank. Her trial was so popular it knocked the inauguration of Teddy Roosevelt off the front pages. But the opulance of this age as evidence in the HBO show The Gilded Age is astounding. For the first time America had a monied class built off the toil of people who worked in factories and foundaries and made the very few wealthy at the expense of the very many. It is during this time America came of age. The railroads allowed national markets to flower and bring goods to a national market. All those rail lines built during the Civil War to move troops could now move goods to market. And they did. For the first time local markets were eclipsed for a distant place where few would ever meet the people buying their wheat, tomatoes, corn, tobacco. Wage Slaves and Conspicuous Consumption were two terms born at the same time. Americans now would sell their time for a wage and become slaves to ten hour work days and six day weeks. There were no child labor laws. Childen died in foundaries and mills by the dozens. There were no rules at all except that the fabulous new class of the rich could do whatever they wanted. And yet it was a time of the building of the Statue of Liberty which had trouble finding funding. The Brooklyn Bridge where men died in droves from the bends. The corrupt election of Rutherford B Hayes which makes what Donald Trump tried to pull off small time. And there was Andrew Carnegie who wrote a book called Wealth where he tried to decide why he should have so much when others had so little. He didnt beleive in hard work and only worked four hours a day. So that wasn't it. He finally decided it was luck. Being at the right place at the right time. That right time was when the Civil War ended in 1865 and Titanic sunk in 1912. That time was called The Gilded Age.

Mark Twain and Subscription Books

We have authors putting 104,000 ads in the New York Times. We have authors who are starving and cant get their books in Barnes and Noble or just about anywhere else. We have authors who don't even bother and self publish on KDP and take their royalty checks Amazon sends them. We have Big Publishing screaming from the rooftops about the evil empire. We have the digitization of books following the digitization of music. When was the last time you bought a CD?

The first thing that hits you when you walk into Barnes and Noble is how does anybody sell anything anymore. There is just so much. And of course you cannot find your own book as an author unless you are the one percent who posted that ad (paid for by the wealthier authors) to complain about Amazonian treatment. And it is ruled by the few. We probably have the same gap in publishing that exists in the rest of the country. The few reap their profit while the many choke on the crumbs.

And yet the more things change the more they stay the same. Did you know how Mark Twains Books were first sold? They were not sold in stores. His books were not deemed worthy. They were sold by subscription services. In other words they were sold by mail and by door to door salesman. Subscription books were not deemed worthy of review then but of course that didn't bother Twain. He sold into best-sellerdom and beyond.

And now as the powers that be hack it out we are turning back to those subscription days. In a time when we are watching on our own individual screens our individual shows we now get our individual books recommended to us by Bookbub and Book Guerrilla. It is the future and it is now. Small bookstores will be that individual as well. Loyal patrons relying on their bookseller to hand sell them a book.

Mark Twain would get it. He surely would.

www.williamhazelgrove.com


www.williamahazelgrove.com

Ban Lifted on Twain Book "Eves Diary"

Seems Mark Twain knew all about book selling. Ron Suskind writing the second he scurries out of government has nothing on him. Salaciousness sells. Just ask the author of the Palin tell all Joe McGinnis. Sarah had  an affair with a basketball player. And he was black. Or Suskinds contention Obama doesn't like women. Even that sells in a sort of reverse misogynistic boys club man cave oeuvre.

But Twain wrote Eve's Diary in 1906 and it was too racy for a library in Charlton Mass and was banned for one hundred and five years. Talk about being out of print. The book about the relationship of Adam and Eve had racy pictures that one Hattie L Carpenter (librarian) did not care for and started the  ball rolling. The ban held and patrons of the library could not find the racy little book anywhere in the stacks.

And Twain knew even then it would be good for sales and called the banning parties "freaks of of the Charlton library." But now all has been forgiven.The book has been restored and people can now read Eves Diary dirty pictures and all. I suppose there is nothing new under the sun. Sex sells. Even anti sex sells. I am sure Hattie L. Carpenter would not have let Joe McGinnis's book into her hallowed library . Maybe she wouldn't have even let that misoginistic Suskind tell all in the door either.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Borders and the Thirty Four Dollar Book

Times are hard. On this we can agree. Bankruptcies, foreclosures, Borders. Borders has gone bankrupt and many point to this that the publishing industry is going through massive change. The ebook is threatening to upend the industry the way the IPOD did to the music biz with a Kindle for every home and those downloads streaming in leaving empty stores and libraries in their wake. But then through all this comes the thirty four dollar book.

Of course I am talking about the Twain Autobiography. The small bookstore I ordered the book from and had to rush into get it lest someone else grab it still has back orders and no books. There are people who are waiting all over America to pay thirty four dollars for a book only a little smaller than a tombstone. What does this say in our current woes me climate? That Twain still sells. That people will plunk down a hell of a lot of money for a book. That people must be really suckers. That reading a paper book is still something people want to do?

What I take from it is that people want to read what they want to read and they don't care who delivers it to them. That the musings of a man who wrote over a hundred years ago holds up is a very good thing. That people will stand in line to pay thirty four dollars for a book that is not a thriller, tell all, celeb book is even better. So it would seem to say something about human nature. That just when we thought that the publishing industry had gone kaput, there is this monster book that is a rambling discourse of one thing or another. Very Twain. Very unconventional. Very human.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will blast off in February

How To Read Twain's Massive Autobiography

Ok. So you bought the monster book for the monster price (34 smackers). The book is so physically big I can't put it in my back pack, but carry it like the old testament under my arm. So you transport this big bastard from coffee house to train to bus to wherever you are going. It is so big I let it ride in the back seat of my car as an extra passenger. Strapped in of course so it doesn't kill me if I can get in accident by knocking off my head. When I pull up to a coffee house I reach in the back like I am bringing in a toddler and carry the book cradled to my breast. Well, you get the picture.

Then you sit down and open the tome of tomes and wade through the editor's explanations that Twain started and stopped his autobiography over a period of twenty years and this is how they stitched it together from notes and typists and essays and secretaries who listened to the great man ramble and that if you put manuscript 56A and connect it to manuscript 100C from 1901 then you get a continuity that Twain really wanted and that was why this version is the authentic Twain biography and....By now you have lost your scholarly interest in the process and really want to read some Twain.

So it begins. It is interesting historically to hear the thoughts of a nineteenth century man who is witty and observant and who rambles on about all sorts of things but then you find yourself reading about his thoughts about a typesetting machine or his servants or the taxi in London or Grants stoic manner when dealing with publishers and you start to....drift....zzzzzz. Now being Mark Twain you rally again and that is when you begin to find a method...you, well, you...skim.

Now skimming is an art. You want to find the real nuggets of gold and maybe it is all gold but it is the twenty first century and you really don't have all this time to read about making a bust of General Grant and how the good general posed for the artist and, and....zzzzz...skim! Now you are to a section on Twain's thoughts on writing. Interesting. Very interesting. You read that and hope for more and read on and on and now you are in Europe and Twain is ruminating on the difference between Europe and the United States and you start to slow down...down...down...and so you...skim!

Blasphemous. I know. But the book has a lot of gold and maybe if you read every word you would be a better man or woman, but for me, I am after the Twain nuggets,so, I....SKIM!

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will blast off in February

3/5ths OF A Person, SLAVE, or that darn NWORD!

Seems the 'publicans don't like the word SLAVE that darn Twain scholar used for the NWORD and they don't like 3/5ths OF A PERSON neither. They just read the Constitution in the Senate and conveniently skated right over the part about a slave being 3/5 of a person which is exactly what that Twain scholar decided the NWORD in Huck Finn should be replaced with: SLAVE. Good thing that Twain scholar studied up because I'm sure he wouldnt' want to use a whole person when he can use three fifths. I wonder how much of a person an NWORD is? Makes you think don't it.

But the 'publicans don't believe there were SLAVES no how. Seems they forgot the part in the Constitution that said if a slave escaped up north to a free state then they were not automatically free. In fact Dred Scott proved they could be sent back down South. So I guess they were still 3/5ths, NWORD, or SLAVE. Seems we just don't like to think a-tall about our history and we can't decide what word we like. We would just assume it didn't happen except them pesky books keep laying around with those bad words that we sure don't want our highschool kiddies to read with their IPODS of Kanye and the boys. Lord knows they are virgin ears that might be scorched by them 3/5 people.

You know come to think of it maybe we should just get rid of the NWORD altogether and go with 3/5. Kind of has a ring to it and not as clumsy as NWORD. Course now the 'publicans don't seem to like 3/5 neither so that won't work. And SLAVE dont' work. And the NWORD don't work. How about we just call em 7/8? Its a little higher than 3/5 and don't have none of them slave connotations that the Twain scholar likes to use for everybody. We could just put 7/8 where ever an NWORD existed and we could maybe put that in the Constitution to show our liberality. Then 'publicans could read that and say if a 7/8 person escaped to a free state and picked up an 1/8 then they could become a whole.  Just to show they are forward thinking group of people. Huh. Wonder if that makes em' free?

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man should blast off in February

Twain and TRIGGER

When I was a boy in Baltimore i picked up a book called NIGGER by Dick Gregory. At the time there were riots in the city since King had been shot and I had been mugged a few times by kids from the very tough inner city school. Strife Strife Strife. My parents were big time Kennedy liberals from Virginia and my mom taught in the  inner city schools and everything just seemed to be falling apart. Robert Kennedy's assassination, Kings, Wallace. The Vietnam war seemed to be the fire behind everything. And in the middle of all this on the paperback rack in the Enoch Pratt library was Dick Gregory's book, NIGGER. I checked the book out under a librarians horn rimmed stare.
 
 I read NIGGER on our porch and on the roof of our house. I didn't want anyone to see the book because I was sure there would be punishment. NIGGER told of Dick Gregory's childhood in Chicago and his struggle to become a comic while enduring incredible racism. He was jailed, beaten, threatened, evicted, and all through it he just kept on going. By the end he was marching with King and others and then he wrote this book with the inscription to his mother that said if she heard this word again, then maybe they had published his book.

The thing that fascinated me about Dick Gregory's book, NIGGER, was the way he described his ordeal as a poor black boy in the ghetto. It was just so heartfelt and dead on in it's brutality. The way he shined shoes and got kicked in the mouth when he dared to look at a white woman. The countless times he was beaten by his mothers boyfriend Big Prez and the way he just kept on with his dream of becoming somebody. The way he started to use humor to his advantage and how he broke into show business against incredible odds. By the end of the book I understood (as much as a ten year old can) why he named the book NIGGER. He told the story of that word.

 I had to special order Dick Gregory's book from the library to read it again. It seemed it was nowhere to be found. And when I picked up the book the librarian stared at me the same way. My wife and my kids stared at that title on our kitchen table. NIGGER. It seemed someone was shouting in the house. My wife turned the book over to it's less offensive back. I reread the book and tripped back to those hot Baltimore days and I was back there with Dick Gregory struggling in the ghetto again, driving through a snowstorm with his pregnant wife to get to a comedy club. Dick did his routine and was heckled many times during his show and then someone called him a NIGGER during his monologue. Gregory paused as the audience went quiet and turned and said, "did you hear that, that man? He just called me Roy Rodger's horse: TRIGGER! The audience broke up.

Even though Dick Gregory named his novel NIGGER, it seems we haven't learned a damn thing. We still have fools who think they know best about our past and want to do things like take the NIGGER out of Huckleberry Finn so high school students can read the book.  I will say it was hard to find Dick Gregory's book, but I was glad to see no one had renamed the book, TRIGGER, so high school students could read it. The book stands as NIGGER. So it should.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man should be out soon

Paying Thirty Four Bucks for Twain's Book

So do you pay the big number and have a tombstone square of paper that you can either read or beat off an intruder and probably be charged with reading a concealed weapon? Twain's  book is big and it is expensive. Yeah I know so and so has it for blah blah. Well I couldn't find it anywhere except the little independent bookstore that supported my book and that thirty four bucks is with a ten percent author discount!

And I vacillate. Christmas. Blowing lots of dough on gifts and everything else commensurate with making merry and what I am going to go plunk down thirty four bucks for a book when people are downloading for ten bucks? No. I'm not going to to do it! Even though I special ordered the thing and they got it in and gave me to Friday (today) to come in and pick it up or they would sell it to the next person in line who requested a copy and by the way the publisher is totally backlogged and so good luck finding it somewhere else. Still, I hesitate and sit in the coffee shop across the way telling myself in a very Scrooge like way that it is ridiculous to pay thirty four dollars for a book!

My brother said he would wait for the paperback. Sensible. Very sensible. Wait for the price to fall and of course it will and paying thirty four dollars now for the book is just plain stupid. Why times being what they are that thirty four dollars could go a long way in food or other necessities and of course you can't eat a book and you can't pay your electric bill or gas up your car with a book so it is utterly ridiculous to pay thirty four bucks for something clearly I could do without. I mean I am still trying to finish Jonathan Ferris second novel and it has slowed down and I am reading Dickens again and I am thinking about cracking Portis's True Grit which is in my backpack as well and so it is ridiculous to add this monstrous book to my list and pay thirty four Somalians!

So into the car. Yes, Yes. All done and go pick up the kids and get the tires changed on the car. There. You cant' put a book on your wheels. Tires. Practical. Practical. Keep driving. Yes, well, I'll just stop in and let them know I don't want the book. That is only fair. They close at five and it is four forty five. Yes. Ok. Park the car. Yes. Just let them know. Hello. Oh, you are here for your book....let me get it for you. Wow! Look at the size of that thing. Ha! Wow! Just let him know now that you don't want it. Jesus, it is huge. Just let him know. Now.Well, we had a lot of people who want this book but I held it. So, will that be cash or credit? I stare at him and my mouth moves in the proper direction and I nod and let him know that I will be making the sensible decision right now! Ah, I say, you know what? Yes? Ah, I really think I should....Yes? I should, I should...I should really....Yes? I should, should, should, should, should. Yes? Yes? I should, should should, should, should, should, shoooould... Yes? Yes? Yes? ...PUT IT ON CREDIT!

 Fine, I'll wrap it up.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in January

What Twain's Autobiography Has to Say to us.

The fact that Mark Twain's autobiography is so popular I cannot get a copy through I have trudged through the snow to three bookstores only to be met by the stoical, we can order it for you but we cant guarantee when it will come in, is a very good thing. Also it is damn interesting that this raconteur from over a hundred years ago speaks to us from the grave and we want to listen. One would think with our twittering flittering Facebooking surfing brains we would have no interest  in the musings of a man from the nineteenth century, but apparently we do.

Which shows that for all our cyber fascination we still crave what is behind the curtain. Twain's keen sense of irony and play is what makes Huckleberry Finn  and the Adventures of Tom Sawyer beat along like a modern novel. If he had lived in our present day he might have been a vagabond or a street person, a rock star, a poet, or a famous author. Or he might have been the man in the coffee house who just wont shut up. He was into just about everything and failed many times in his life as a printer, inventor and real estate speculator. He was broke at the end and scrounging for money like many authors.

But of course you cannot take him out of his time. He lived when a man could travel west and start a fire and burn down thousands of acres around Lake Tahoe which is exactly what he did with a friend. They just wanted to see a big fire. But you could do that in a country of a million people with a great unsettled frontier. He puttered up and down the Mississippi as a river boat pilot and ran his ship aground not a few times. He was admittedly wanting, but of course his days along the Mississippi gave him his greatest material. His wife was sickly and spend much of her time secluded in Victorian gloom and he lost his daughter and that broke his heart.

But through it all Twain wrote and wrote and wrote and left behind his autobiography. I have only read is biography which unfortunately was sorely lacking on Twain's writing besides his novels. This man who smoked cigars like a fiend, drank whiskey, loved billiards, taveled the world, and said exactly what he thought to the point he had to leave several towns for offences he had given, can instruct the modern reader from afar on how the life not planned is a great tonic to our twenty first century obsession with getting it all done.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in January

The Singular Mark Twain--Review

You would think a man who was one of the bestselling authors of his time would not have financial difficulties. Just finished biography The Singular Mark Twain and I was amazed that apart from marrying well and making very good money from his books and lecturing--he had to file bankruptcy and died with very little money that was squandered by his daughters. When reading Twain's biography you are struck at how much money he made and how much he lost. He had a penchant for making terrible investments, getting caught up in get rich quick schemes and basically being bad with his money. Sounds like a writer to me.


We assume that as writers there are those out there with the mythical pot of gold. Well, there are. People do make millions from their books but they also lose millions. Mark Twain even had his own publishing company, his wife was wealthy, he made a bundle from lecturing around the country, his books sold well, yet he spent the latter years of his life in debt. He did what most people do when they get money, he increased his lifestyle and traveled.

He also really believed he had the key to riches with several inventions. What is interesting about the Twain character is that he knew a lot of times what he was doing was not in his best interests. But he could not help himself. He ended up having to lecture for years to pay his debts from a bankruptcy and basically living abroad because he could not afford to live in the United States. Amazing that one of our premiere authors could not afford to stay in his own house. He coudlnt' sell it either and ended up practically giving it away. The crash of 1890 pretty much wiped him out. I guess there is nothing new under the son. Hard times are hard times. Even for those at the top of the literary mountain.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man will be out in January

Review of The Singular Mark Twain

You would think a man who was one of the bestselling authors of his time would not have financial difficulties. Just finished biography The Singular Mark Twain and I was amazed that apart from marrying well and making very good money from his books and lecturing--he had to file bankruptcy and died with very little money that was squandered by his daughters. When reading Twain's biography you are struck at how much money he made and how much he lost. He had a penchant for making terrible investments, getting caught up in get rich quick schemes and basically being bad with his money. Sounds like a writer to me.


We assume that as writers there are those out there with the mythical pot of gold. Well, there are. People do make millions from their books but they also lose millions. Mark Twain even had his own publishing company, his wife was wealthy, he made a bundle from lecturing around the country, his books sold well, yet he spent the latter years of his life in debt. He did what most people do when they get money, he increased his lifestyle and traveled.

He also really believed he had the key to riches with several inventions. What is interesting about the Twain character is that he knew a lot of times what he was doing was not in his best interests. But he could not help himself. He ended up having to lecture for years to pay his debts from a bankruptcy and basically living abroad because he could not afford to live in the United States. Amazing that one of our premiere authors could not afford to stay in his own house. He coudlnt' sell it either and ended up practically giving it away. The crash of 1890 pretty much wiped him out. I guess there is nothing new under the son. Hard times are hard times. Even for those at the top of the literary mountain.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in January