“… a biography as rich and engaging as a portrait by John Singer Sargent.”

“Laura Claridge has given us so much more than a mere biography of this august arbiter of good manners; [She] has flung open the doors of an entire society – she has shown us in enchanting, mesmerizing detail how the modern city of New York was built and made.”

“What she [Claridge] has given us is not only a canny and insightful read, but when she calls her Emily ‘a domestic anthropologist,’ you know she’s right. Brava!”

“It was the genius of Emily Post to show us that manners are the small coin of morality….Emily Post became perhaps the most important and certainly the most influential moralist of the 20th century. It is Laura Claridge’s genius to explain the surprising and improbable background and equally amazing personality of Emily Post.”

“The first to fully portray this pioneer, Claridge is becoming the sort of biographer readers will follow anywhere, …and now this absorbing study of a keenly perceptive ethicist second only to Eleanor Roosevelt in the immensity of her influence….The pain and humiliation of her divorce from Edwin Post fostered her devotion to writing (she was a successful novelist) and seeded the compassion and advocacy for women that shaped her highly moral approach to etiquette. Claridge chronicles Post’s remarkable ability to discern the needs of a burgeoning American public transformed by immigration, industrialization, war, and women’s and civil rights, and hungry for guidance in social and familial situations.”

“An absorbing new biography…Claridge writes a smooth, clean story of a woman whose legacy is much more central to American life than choosing the correct fork.”

“Laura Claridge’s Emily Post is, in the end, a sterling — if you will — contribution to the biographies of American heroines.”

“[Claridge] offers a rich description of the social development of the times,…an immensely researched work that straddles the line between academic and popular nonfiction…[R]eaders will find themselves rewarded with fascinating insights into the times through which Emily Post guided us.”

“As with her last book, a biography of Norman Rockwell, Laura Claridge has revisited an American icon, upending or at least questioning cliché, which, in the case of Emily Post, is that of a fussy, obsessive woman preoccupied with which fork one should use. Claridge tracks Emily’s rise from vivacious debutante to poised but neglected society wife and mother against the backdrop of the Gilded Age, deftly tucking in such capsule anecdotes as the déclassé Vanderbilts vying for high-society acceptance….Claridge’s book hints at becoming a cultural or literary analysis, offering glimpses of Post’s historical context and writing style."

“Claridge’s Emily Post is not only a fascinating look at a woman who managed to conquer many worlds in her time, it is also a social biography of the changing face of the United States during the 20th century.”

“Claridge’s warm, appreciative text does full justice to the surprisingly democratic influence of Post’s most famous book, and it also paints a rich, almost novelistic portrait of a woman whose long, full life embodied the dramatic changes that transformed American society.”