American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, the Birth of the It Girl, and the Crime of the Century by Paula Uruburu

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There was no controversy over who killed Stanford White in 1906. As numerous onlookers gawked, coal and railroad tycoon Harry K. Thaw strode up to the famed architect at a theatre performance and shot him three times. In this so-called Crime of the Century, the motive was as visible as the perpetrator. Thaw's spouse, artist's model Evelyn Nesbit, was at his side when the cuckolded husband killed the notorious womanizer who had deflowered his wife. Despite the indisputable evidence, the avenger was never convicted of the crime; after one jury deadlocked, the second declared him not guilty for reason of insanity. American Eve is the story of relationships, a crime, and two trials even more engrossing than the O. J. Simpson epic.

From the Publisher

The scandalous story of America's first supermodel, sex goddess, and modern celebrity, Evelyn Nesbit, the temptress at the center of Stanford White's famous murder, whose iconic life story reflected all the paradoxes of America's Gilded Age.

Known to millions before her sixteenth birthday in 1900, Evelyn Nesbit was the most photographed woman of her era, an iconic figure who set the standard for female beauty. Women wanted to be her. Men just wanted her. When her life of fantasy became all too real, and her jealous millionaire husband, Harry K. Thaw, killed her lover—celebrity architect Stanford White, builder of the Washington Square Arch and much of New York City—she found herself at the center of the "Crime of the Century" and the popular courtroom drama that followed—a scandal that signaled the beginning of a national obsession with youth, beauty, celebrity, and sex.

The story of Evelyn Nesbit is one of glamour, money, romance, sex, madness, and murder, and Paula Uruburu weaves all of these elements into an elegant narrativethat reads like the best fiction— only it's all true. American Eve goes far beyond just literary biography; it paints a picture of America as it crossed from the Victorian era into the modern, foreshadowing so much of our contemporary culture today.

Harold Schecter

By centering her book on the ever-fascinating figure of Evelyn Nesbit—the stunningly beautiful chorine whose sexual charisma still burns through the Victorian photographs that adorn the book—Uruburu has produced not only a tour de force of historical crime writing and an illuminating social history but a rollicking piece of storytelling: a work that brings to life an entire glittering era while maintaining a breathless narrative pace. (Harold Schecter, author of The Devil's Gentleman: Privilege, Poison, and the Trial That Ushered in the Twentieth Century)

Michael D'Antonio

In American Eve a beautiful young woman, a lecherous prince of New York, and an unstable husband show us how the national sport of media-fed scandal began. Before the story ends, one man is dead, another is locked away, and Paula Uruburu has given us a look at an age of excess that looks remarkably like our own. It is page turning history at its best. (Michael D'Antonio, author of Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams)

Honor Moore

Tragic now when a century ago it seemed merely scandalous, the story of Evelyn Nesbit is a gripping cautionary tale for those who believe Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan are the first of their kind. How is it that after a century of feminism, young beautiful women still crash and burn for an eager public? Using newly available family sources, Paula Uruburu tells Evelyn Nesbit's story in all its darkness and terror. (Honor Moore, author of The Bishop's Daughter)

Martha McPhee

Paula Uruburu has given life to the tragic American story of the poor, beautiful nymph whose fate is so often entangled with extreme wealth and the powerful man. Evelyn Nesbit is like a Dreiser heroine—Sister Carrie, Jenny Gerhardt—though hers is a true story, harrowing in this writer's hands. (Martha McPhee, author of L'America and Gorgeous Lies)

Zachary Lazar

In American Eve, a fascinating evocation of a woman and her times, Paula Uruburu does more than just tell the story of Evelyn Nesbit. Sex, money, scandal, celebrity, doom—the whole cocktail of America's obsessions is served up here in this intriguing, addictive book. (Zachary Lazar, author of Sway)

Philip Lopate

Wonderfully absorbing . . . A lurid tabloid story of yore brought to fresh life and relevance with remarkable insight, verve and wisdom. Old New York is laid bare in all its decadence and the cult of pubescent beauty traced to its source, all with worldliness, wit, humor, compassion, and suspense. The result is a real page-turner. (Philip Lopate, author of Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan and Writing New York)

Mike Dash

Of all the famous beauties of a hundred years ago, Evelyn Nesbit is the only one who would still turn heads today. Paula Uruburu's triumph is to fix this very modern- looking girl in her proper time and place, and also to describe the New York of the early 1900s so vividly that we feel we, too, could be strolling towards the 21st Street apartment where the teen was seduced by Stanford White—or sitting in Madison Square Garden on the fatal evening that White was shot dead. (Mike Dash, author of Satan's Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York's Trial of the Century)

Karen Abbott

Paula Uruburu serves up an intriguing and meticulously researched slice of American history. Evelyn Nesbit typified the glorious excesses of the Gilded Age, and this story has everything: sex, deception, drama, and a lurid love triangle, all culminating in the crime of the century. (Karen Abbott, author of Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul)

The New York Times - Ada Calhoun

American Eve is a real page turner, especially the later sections, which deal with the murder and the sensational trials.

Publishers Weekly

Uruburu, an associate professor of English at Hofstra who has consulted for the History Channel, examines the notorious life of model and chorus girl Evelyn Nesbit (1885?-1967), whose rise to stardom was as spectacular as her subsequent fall. Born in rural Pennsylvania, Florence Evelyn Nesbit was an "exceedingly pretty infant" who by 15 had achieved success as an actress and model in New York City, where her blend of sultry sexuality and unspoiled purity attracted the eye of famed architect and playboy Stanford White. But Pittsburgh heir and sexual sadist Harry K. Thaw wanted Nesbit for himself and vowed to expose White's "immoral" conduct with underage girls. Thaw went on to brutally rape and beat Nesbit, yet she agreed to marry him. Still consumed with jealousy, Thaw shot White to death in 1906, leading to a headline-grabbing trial. Uruburu's depiction of Nesbit's early life and career is richly detailed, but the book loses steam near the end and barely addresses Nesbit's post-trial tailspin into alcoholism. Still, readers will appreciate the parallels between Nesbit's "It Girl" status and our own celebrity-obsessed culture. Photos. (May 1)

Karen Sandlin Silverman - Library Journal

Uruburu (English, Hofstra Univ.) posits that today's Lindsay-Britney-Paris-obsessed media culture has its roots in the "crime of the century": the 1906 murder of renowned New York architect Stanford White on the roof of the original Madison Square Garden (which he designed) by Harry Thaw, the jealous husband of Evelyn Nesbit. Early photographs of this child-woman are both discomforting and hypnotic, and hers is indeed a sad tale. Neglected by her widowed mother, she modeled for artists and photographers to support her family, performed on stage, and was promoted by the entranced White, who allegedly raped her. At Thaw's murder trials (the first ended in a hung jury, the second in acquittal by reason of insanity), Nesbit testified to all the lurid details of her life. Uruburu was granted access to Nesbit family materials, and though she offers an interesting case study, her often sketchy book gives short shrift to the last 50 years of her subject's long life. In the end, evidently mesmerized by Nesbit's story, she offers her own lurid take on events to the exclusion of other, more nuanced explorations. Not appropriate for academic collections, this should be popular with "ripped from the headlines" biography and true-crime readers in public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ11/15/08.]

Kirkus Reviews

Uruburu (English/Hofstra Univ.) sees the sensational, salacious career of Evelyn Nesbit as a cautionary tale about a preternaturally beautiful pubescent Red Ridinghood surrounded by hungry wolves in the dark woods of early 20th-century Manhattan. Born on Christmas day near Pittsburgh, Pa., probably in 1884 (her mother was always vague about the year), Nesbit lost her father at 11 and by age 13 was supporting her family as an artist's model. In late 1900, she came with her brother and mother to New York City, where she became a wildly popular subject for painters and photographers. (A generous selection of illustrations shows why.) Nesbit was the first in an American procession of very young, very attractive girls who all eventually disappeared down celebrity's maw, writes the author. She attracted the notice of powerful moneyed men, including architect Stanford White and insane Harry K. Thaw, scion of a Pittsburgh fortune, who eventually married Nesbit and in 1906 shot and killed White in view of a crowd on the roof of Madison Square Garden. At the ensuing trials (the first ended with a hung jury), Nesbit told the sordid story of how White had paid her mother to take a trip out of town in 1901 and leave 16-year-old Evelyn in his care; he then plied her with champagne and raped her in his Garden tower. Her scandalous testimony reversed the arc of Nesbit's fame, sending her into a 60-year decline, years covered swiftly in the book's final paragraphs. Uruburu accepts Nesbit's version of the events throughout, quoting liberally from her two memoirs and portraying her as an innocent victim of powerful men and a bad mother. The author's stout defense is sometimes couched in prose as florid asthat of the fin-de-siecle journalism she deplores: "Seconds later, a startlingly loud gunshot pierced the torpid night air."Cliche and hyperbole vitiate this pathetic parable, whose larger cultural significance struggles for attention amid detailed accounts of the rapacious principals' perversions. Agent: Katharine Cluverius/ICM

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