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"A fast-paced tale of … Polly’s many court battles, newspaper headlines, mobster dealings and society gossip…. A breathless tale told through extraordinary research.” —The New York Times Book Review
Simply put: Everybody came to Polly's. Pearl "Polly" Adler (1900-1962) was a diminutive dynamo whose Manhattan brothels in the Roaring Twenties became places not just for men to have the company of women but were key gathering places where the culturati and celebrity elite mingled with high society and with violent figures of the underworld—and had a good time doing it.
As a Jewish immigrant from eastern Europe, Polly Adler's life is a classic American story of success and assimilation that starts like a novel by Henry Roth and then turns into a glittering real-life tale straight out of F. Scott Fitzgerald. She declared her ambition to be "the best goddam madam in all America" and succeeded wildly. Debby Applegate uses Polly's story as the key to unpacking just what made the 1920s the appallingly corrupt yet glamorous and transformational era that it was and how the collision between high and low is the unique ingredient that fuels American culture.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
November 2, 2021 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593455456
- File size: 588371 KB
- Duration: 20:25:46
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Erin Bennett's spirited narration breathes life into Debby Applegate's richly detailed biography of America's most celebrated brothel keeper. Polly Adler may not exactly have been an icon for her time, but she's a fascinating, colorful figure, and Bennett, who clearly knows a good story when she has one, gives this one her all. The narrative is well researched and well written, and full of famous names. But it has no particular thesis, no romance, and--maybe not surprisingly--hardly any sex. The coloration of the narrative, then, is almost entirely the work of the narrator, who clearly is invested in her assignment and lends it the sharpness, emphasis, and pacing it requires. This lively slice of social history is sure to appeal to many listeners. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine -
Starred review from September 13, 2021
Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Applegate (The Most Famous Man in America) chronicles the astonishing rags-to-riches tale of Pearl “Polly” Adler (1900–1962), “the proprietress of Manhattan’s most renowned bordello,” in this spirited account. In effervescent writing, Applegate chronicles how Adler, after escaping anti-Semitic Russia for New York City in 1913, survived judgmental relatives, sweatshop work, and rape before stumbling into a job procuring women for Nick Montana, “the Henry Ford of the sex trade.” In 1920, Adler opened her own brothel and catapulted to the upper echelons of New York society as her house “became a favorite oasis of the bootleggers and bookmakers... eager to blow their ill-gotten gains.” As Applegate writes, “For the first time in American history, the luminaries of politics, finance, and show business were mingling as equals.” With notoriety, though, came vice raids and, eventually, a stint in jail in 1935 for “running a disorderly house.” Still, nothing could dim Adler’s fiery ambition; after retiring to California in 1945, she wrote her autobiography, and, like Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, “cannily turned the cult of the party into a ladder to climb out of the gutter.” The result is a rollicking examination of one of the country’s most sensational hostesses.
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