Reviews for English and Catholic: The Lords Baltimore in the Seventeenth Century

The average rating for English and Catholic: The Lords Baltimore in the Seventeenth Century based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-12-31 00:00:00 William Short This book was awful. I was interested in reading about Brooke Astor, as I live in Newport, home of the first Mrs Astor's summer home, and because my husband's first ship, the USS Russell, named for her father, was brought to life by Mrs Astor with my husband present in the audience. The first half of the book was somewhat interesting, covering her three marriages and the first 57 years of her life. The next third of the book was absolutely horrific. Full of name-dropping and boring writing, there were so many people thrown at the reader that it was hard to keep them straight. It was amazing how much Mrs Astor cared about her philanthropic ventures, but there was too much detail covering how much was given and when. It read more like a financial statement than a biography. I ended up skipping most of this section and began reading again with the discussion of whether her son was guilty of elder abuse. The entire book suffered from bad writing and worse editing. Fragmentary sentences ran rampant and really offended my sense of grammar. In one paragraph, Kiernan writes: "To her mind this shift in direction was only fitting. Just as it was only fitting that as president she take responsibility for putting this change into effect." She ends the very same paragraph with the following: "As she set about this, she began taking John D. Rockefeller's advice one step further. One that played to her strengths." The writing, as published, read far too choppily and was very distracting to the reader. If one wants to learn more about Brooke Astor and her life, this is not the book to pick up.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-11-19 00:00:00 Jaime Urrea Starting from a humble beginning as the daughter of a Marine Corps Lieutenant, Brooke Astor's life is chronicled by Frances Kiernan in a slow-paced matter-of-fact way, until about the middle of the biography, when the author makes her connection to the main character, the Grande Dame of New York society, and the story takes off. The words then begin to sparkle and true admiration emerges to demonstrative heights as we get into some real meaty insights of this patriarch of Manhattan. Brooke Astor had married three times and Kiernan tells her story as it was lived for the hundred plus years of Brooke's life. The great love she had for Vincent Astor and the wealth which was bestowed upon her and the Vincent Astor Foundation is breathtaking. Yet, through all this, Brooke only thought of the people of New York and making their lives culturally better. She endowed art projects, museums, parks, and many charities which needed assistance in the years when she was the chair of the Astor Foundation. Much to the chagrin of previous board and chair members, she imposed her will to those charities which needed special attention. As the years unfold, we are shown the strength of a lady who was indeed gracious, impeccable, and very strong minded in the face of others who had their own agendas to accomplish. She gave away over 200 million dollars! We are given a glimpse inside her manipulations of those around her and how she was able to accomplish many great projects for the people of New York. Her biggest disappointment was that of her son Tony Marshall, who allegedly took advantage of this strong lady towards the end of her life by swindling the foundation and her funds out of millions of dollars. He is currently under indictment and trial is set to begin in February 2009. He commenced his activities of taking control of her money when she was in her 90's and she died in 2007 at age 105. Replete with 24 pages of photographs, I heartily recommend this book, if only to see how the other half live.