Florence King Books

What a trip! We just moved to the South a few years ago (First Atlanta, now the Delta), and I'm wishing someone had recommended this a while back. It helps with so many things! All the contradictions, the unexplained rules, the assumptions and the wacky productions...King helps it all make sense, with great humor and flair. If you enjoy this, I also recommend Gayden Metcalfe's books: Being Dead is No Excuse (about funerals in the South) and Somebody is Going to Die if Lily Beth Doesn't Catch that Bouquet (Southern weddings, obviously). Enjoy!

This book was delivered earlier than expected. I had read the hardback copy which I lost through loaning it. The book is about southerners and for an southerner, it explains all the people I have come to know.. I know every character described in the book.

This is my second reading of this book, separated by 15 years. I fondly remembered it as an hilarious work, yet this time halfway through I realized that I, and most of my family, lurk in the pages. We Southerners have families loaded with women who "go to pieces" and men who think they still live in the Middle Ages. We have legacies of spoiled, sassy belles and proud, wounded gallants still fighting the War Between the States. Sometimes we leave Mama's house shuttered for decades because "she never wanted her things disturbed". That which would cause hardly a concern in Omaha becomes a major issue in Richmond. Although the names change the cast is the same. It's all here, and none of it is made up-each character continues to thrive by the thousands in the South. If you want to understand Southerners you cannot just eat burgoo and wine jelly with custard-Southern Ladies and Gentlemen is a must for any true aficionado of this beautiful culture.

Indispensable for both natives and transplants. Absolutely the best analysis of the Southern mindset that I have ever encountered -- I'm a native -- and a dangerously funny read to boot. Ms. King writes with a caustic wit wrapped in an ever-so-delicate velvet glove. I quote her insights often, and almost always end up having to get yet another copy to give to someone. The South really has its own flavor -- from Faulkner to Foxworthy -- and Florence King has it all neatly summed up. Everything I have read of hers so far is worthwhile.

Even after 30 odd years (yes, I really did read this back in the 1970s) this book remains very funny. It's also 'spot on' for the morals and manners of its time and place, but as a work of sociology or anthropology, some of its declarations and observations are more historical than immediate. I don't mean all of that deliciously eccentric Southernicity has vanished, but thanks to cable/satellite tv and the Internet, the "South" has become substantially more culturally homogeneous with the rest of America. And those quirks that remain have almost become national treasures. (For example, even in Ohio restaurants I'm now asked whether I want sweet tea or unsweetened. Ten years ago, there was no choice above the Mason-Dixon line: Iced tea came unsweetened and you had your choice of white, pink, or blue packaged additives.)This book captures a South not all that dear to sharecroppers or blue-collar TVA workers, but one close to the hearts of debutantes and daughters of the Confederacy. It's often hilarious reading, but don't expect this to be a complete and accurate social roadmap to the south of 2007.

Consisting of a series of talks on various topics relating to the achievement of happiness, this book teaches the reader how to triumph over adversity and experience abundance through spiritual law. The author's explanation of Biblical tales and metaphors is especially valuable and insightful and her interpretations are full of common sense and practical wisdom. Her very engaging style and wonderful ability to explain age-old spiritual truth ensure a stimulating and uplifting reading experience. She deals with topics like faith, intuition, inspiration and more, even referring to movies like The Wizard of Oz. The last chapter is about the inner meaning of the fable of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and how it relates to the thought-forms in the subconscious mind of the individual. It's brilliant! Not only are her words powerful and inspiring, but special affirmations are provided to help achieve successful outcomes. The Secret Door is definitely on a par with her classic work The Game Of Life and I strongly recommend it.

I urge anyone that is looking for spritual and finacial wealth to read this book. If you've never believed in miracles, you will after reading this book and putting it into action. My first experience brought me $15,000.00 within months, then $18,000.00 the next year. I am now a true millionaire and I owe it to this book.

I dropped out of school at the age of 12 and never went back, but Florence Scovel-Shinn lead me through the "Secret Door To Success". It's a magical land once you get there and the journey is equally as magical.

Many blessings to you on your journey. Never give up and never lose sight of what you want. Always know that what you want is possible and is yours for the taking. Just choose the right door.

Bet you can't read just one! You will crave all of her books once you have a taste of Florence Scovel Shinn's words. After you read the books, don't forget to buy the affirmation cards - they are a must!

Florence Scovel Shinn's work, specifically in this book, is a beautiful testament to how unlimited our universe is, and how boundless our creative capacity is in our life.

As a true pioneer in the field of consciousness/laws of attraction in our current times, Shinn writes with uncanny wisdom about succinct concepts, as she helps anyone who reads this book learn about success: that being abundance without limit.

Her work is beautifully expressed, and brings about a peaceful feeling when reading. You can tell she knew what she was writing about, and her faith in unlimited, positive creative capacity is truly timeless wisdom. This is a classic book that can only benefit any reader.

Bet you can't read just one! You will crave all of her books once you have a taste of Florence Scovel Shinn's words. After you read the books, don't forget to buy the affirmation cards - they are a must!

This Is Your Wake-Up Call is easy to read,comprehend,and articulate.
As I read, I became engrafted in the pages. Word for word, piece by piece, I devoured as much as could digest in one sitting quickly returning for more. This book is so filling!! You will definitely experience an awakening that takes you deeper and deeper beyond the pages. As you read,This Is You Wake-Up Call,you begin to enter into the lives of each individual's experience of dream manifestation. While in return your dreams are being shaken and stirred until they began to rumble and flow out of you, causing an awakening from the deep sleep that so many of us fall into from time to time.You can't help but be encouraged and empowered to go forth and occupy, subdue the land, and live Your Dreams,INDEED!

I applaud the efforts of Prophet Todd Hall to provide funding for students to attend or remain in college. I initially bought the book to support that effort. After sitting down and reading, studying, and reflecting on the book my walk has changed, it has grown, and I am awakening from my sleep. I thank God for a word like this. I was taken aback, at first, by the conversational tone and humorous style of writing. As I read the book, I could hear Dr. Hall's voice enter my home as if he were preaching a sermon right there. It met me right where I was at the time. The enthusiasm that he had in writing this book jumped off the page as I read.

It is time for many of us to wake up and embrace our destiny. Our vision has become skewed oftentimes by the annointing and vision of others. It is time for individuals to embrace, walk in, and live what dreams God has given them. I pray God will continue to use Dr. Hall as His messenger of truth, deliverance, and restoration.

This is Your Wake Up Call is a thought provking book that will wake your spirit from its sleep. Dr. Hall challeges you to remember the Dream in side each one of us. He gives practical tools for moving forward in destiny. He points out the fact that it is important for us to remember that "God is not obligated to function within the confines of man's ordinances". Once we truly get this revelation we are free to begin walking out our dreams. This book has truly been a blessing and I recommend that you share it with family and friends.

This Is Your Wake-Up Call: Live Your Dreams is of magnanimous import. I hope I have the proper words to really capture its quality. The book is an easy read, no long drawn-out rhetoric. At first, I was a little skeptical about the page length, which is under one-hundred pages, but as I started reading I began to realize that each and every page had tremendous value.

As I read, I began to realize that I had been sleeping on life, although I was mobile. I was accomplishing things, but yet sleep walking, instead of truly achieving the purposed value that my existence has to offer. This book helped me to see myself walking through daily life with a bed head. What is even more important is that it articulated and demonstrated how to get rid of the bed head (how to get rid of the spiritual and mental lethargy that so often weighs so heavily on us). Needless to say, no more bed head for me.

I highly recommend this book for its unending motivational integrity, as well as its ability to just cause others to go to another level.

This Is Your Wake Up Call: This is an eye opening and motivating book for the entire family. It is a call, a mandate, and a command on our lives to step into our purpose and walk out our destiny. After reading this book, you have neither an Excuse nor Reason to not become what all God called you to be in this earth realm. God created use for such a time as this and we as His people must be in proper positioning to receive what He has for us as well as for our families. Generations are connected and souls are on the line. I strongly recommend this book and not to be just a reader, but a doer. Sleep time is over; This Is Your Wake Up Call. Thanks to all of you who had a hand in this fantastic book.

The book has a lot of beautiful pictures.It is a good book to know about Fire King items, however I found the price on the book is lower than the one that I see at antique stores these days.

This book was very informative. It has wonderful pictures and is a must for any Fire King collector.

I HAVE FOUND THIS BOOK TO BE VERY HELPFUL IN IDENTIFING DIFFERENT PIECES OF GLASS.

This is a great resource for any new collector of Anchor Hocking. I find myself fasinated with this book and it's contents.

I recently started collecting Jadite. I found this book to be a valuable resource. Great photos. Good price guide and full of valuable information.

I discovered Florence King while taking a history class at her undergrad Alma Mater - American University in Washington D.C. - where one of her books, Southern Ladies and Gentleman was used as a primer of sorts for class covering the South since Reconstruction. I became a real fan of her writing and writing style, which is possibly the best in American publishing not only of our time, but of all time.

While her only fiction book was a let down, King excels as an essayist, critic and commentator of American life, politics and social comment. Her writing style is something that every person who takes pen to paper believes (mistakenly) that they are using - its concise wording gets to the point and almost jabs you in the eye with its simplicity and ability to convey her thoughts while changing your mind. Think of King as the ultimate guest at your dinner party of dreams, polite, but ready to snip any loose threads of conversation off lest they dangle in the air and cloud her view.

While I am loath to bring this name up, I will say that I believe Ann Coulter probably thinks that she is a writer on par with Ms. King. She is not. I do bring her name up for one reason: Coulter represents the opposite end of the spectrum on which King "write-fully" (bad pun intended) sits, making King the Grand Dame of true Conservative commentary and writing.

In reading King, park your political beliefs at the door and luxuriate in her keen eye for word usage, grammar and thought. If you are so foolish as to approach her writing with any preconceived notions as to your own beliefs, she will skewer you just as the dim wit that you you know you are not. King is not the type of person to suffer fools wisely.

If our national culture were really based upon the high lofty ideals that we think that it is, King would be a regular on Sunday morning political shows, putting their hosts in their place. But alas, America and Americans are a vapid lot, and thus we get what we deserve: Ann Coulter distracting us from her unfounded and outrageous opinions by wearing a little black dress like a hooker on her way home from a Saturday night job.

But we have King in print. While she doesn't enjoy the book sales that Coulter does, Kings works will bear the test of time and one day she will receive the type of honors due her as a real American treasure that she is.

I've long described Florence King as my favorite living writer (my favorite writer, period, is Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, who -- probably not coincidentally -- also wrote for "National Review" for many years). Yet I have avoided reviewing her books here, not only for fear of not doing them justice, but also because so much of how I try to review books has come from reading Florence King's own reviews. At what point is the pupil ready to grade the master?

Reviews are an art at which Miss King excels, which is why I was so happy to discover an advertisement for "Deja Reviews" a few months ago. This volume is a wonderful companion to "STET, Damnit!," the collection of her "Misanthrope's Corner" columns NR published a couple of years ago. "Deja Reviews" assembles about five-dozen pieces from NR and "The American Spectator." Most of them are reviews, but there are also a number of non-review essays including some NR pieces that weren't in the "Misanthrope's Corner."

Miss King is sharp of eye, wit, and pen. She famously has no patience with idiocy, and best of all possesses a wonderful facility with the language. I was about to call it a "gift," but I imagine she might object, rightly, to that word: she has worked hard over many years to hone her skills. It's not a "gift," but the product of time, energy, and mental commitment. I remember her writing once in the "Misanthrope's Corner" that she turned down invitations to go on television to discuss one or another of her columns. "If I had anything more to say, I'd have put it in the piece." I so admire Miss King not only for what she writes, but also for the effort she puts into her writing.

Her effort and skill make for a great reading experience. You don't have to be familiar with the books she's reviewing to enjoy what she's written about them. These essays are up to her usual high standards for style, humor, and dead-eye insight. As with her earlier collection, there's no index in this book, but that just means I'll once again be filling the flyleaves with my own notations. I imagine I'll learn a lot more about the art of book reviewing, and have a wonderful, entertaining time doing it.

These are reviews you turn to over and over again, always with pleasure, always with astonishment. With forever the question: Just how did she turn that phrase that way and capture both the essence of the book and its aims and failures?"

In a better world, Stephen King would be forgotten and Ph.D.'s in literature would be written on Florence King's oeuvre, for her erudition is astonishing, and her work cries out for annotated editions. These collected reviews are no exception, for she tackles everything from history to feminism to biography (her review of Strom Thurmond's life is one of the finest sustained passages of prose in English belles letters). All extremely well written, all as funny as hell.

One peaks at her soul for a reincarnation of Rabelais and Voltaire, for she is as burlesque as the former, and as poignant as the latter. To be reviewed by Florence King is to cower in fear of a withering aside that will haunt you to the grave. I am sure those who have suffered here have even the typeface of more than a few of these sentences burned into their memory.

In summary, this is a work of timeless scholarship and an exemplar of American prose that should stand as a ready textbook for the art of the review. A joy, a revelation, a hearty laugh, a stimulated intellect, a new fact, a valued friend, a companion voice, a hope for the future, and a pleasure of spirit are all available to those who read Florence King. Get it today.

The book was funny and stuf

Hialarious, as usual. Miss King is the best female author going. Do all you can to obtain this title.

In The Florence king Reader, miss king says this is the book of hers that she likes least. But it contains some wonderfully funny passages, including what I think is the funniest bit in any of her books. This occurs in the chapter 'The Sperm and I' where she is attempting to insert her diaphragm and the cat pounces on it and makes off with it. The description of her chasing the cat to try and get it back had me in tears of laughter. Wonderfully funny too is the passage where her grandma and Emma are eulogising their dead husbands, to the accompaniment of sarcastic comments from their relatives. This is a very, very funny book, what a pity it is out of print.

This is a complete collection of all the 'Misanthrope's Corner' columns Miss King wrote for the National Review from 1991 to 2002.

Every column is a joy to read as Miss King gives her views, usually jaundiced, on current affairs, and is always amusing, whether you agree with what she is saying or not. She is savagely funny writing about the Clintons, the Bushes, the feminisation of America, and anything else that takes her fancy.

she is painfully funny writing about the Clinton/Lewinsky affair. Reminising about her own teen years she recalls:

....It is 1952. Now 16, I hav elost my baby fat and gone from duckling to swan, and my mother, who normally pays no attention to anything except baseball and her hero Sen. Joe McCarthy, is being uncharacteristically maternal. We are washing dishes when suddenly, out of the blue, she says:
"If a man ever asks you to do something funny to him, you tell him to go to hell, you hear?"
"What do you mean, 'something funny'?"
"Never mind, just promise me"
Mystified, I promise. The mystery deepens as she swung off on one of her patriotic tangents.
"That's why the French can't win a war without us! It saps their strength! They're so busy doing something funny to each other that the Germans just walk right in!"

Another favourite passage of mine is where she is writing about the effect that the draft had on men of her generation:

The draft produced the kind of men that today's girls have never known, and relations between the sexes were better for it. What sticks in my mind about them is their self-sufficiency and competence in fixing things that broke and figuring out solutions to emergencies. Thanks to the draft I belong to the last generation of American women who could scream "Do something!" and get results. Most of my men were intellectuals, but they had been taught in basic traning to change a tire in 90 seconds, rig up electrical wiring, tie knots that stayed tied, and take a rifle apart and reassemble it while blindfolded. This last was never necessary in civilian life, but it made for a self-assured deftness that was awesome.

Occasionally Miss King becomes quite lyrical in her praises, whether of the Post office, of Woolworths, Mario Lanza, or Alice Faye. There is a quite enchanting description of her first trip to Paris, and a very touching tribute to her aunt.

Whatever Miss King's views on the subject she is writing about, every column is a joy to read.

"Stet, Damnit!" is the complete collection of Florence King's 1991-2002 columns for the National Review. This reviewer is one of many who used to read National Review beginning with her weekly posting on the last page. King's keen insight into human nature, stubborn common sense, and acerbic wit made her column entertaining whether she was goring sacred cows and pompous egos on the left or right of the political spectrum. Her frequent reviews of movies and books were equal parts insightful and unforgiving of sloppy or pretentious work. Her retirement was a real blow to those who enjoyed her writing style.

This volume is highly recommended for those who are nostalgic for her column. The content holds up pretty well in spite of being a little dated. Hard core junkies of political commentary will also find this entertaining.

Florence King authored "The Misanthrope's Corner," featured on the back page of "National Review" for many years. The column was known for "serving up a smorgasbord of curmudgeonly critiques about rubes and all else bothersome to the Queen of Mean," as NR put it.

It's a rare writer who is not only a skillful wordsmith, but insightful and witty as well; Miss King's columns never fail to be all three.

"She is an unconventional satirist," said Louise Rothe of the Chattanooga News-Free Press, "funny, unpredictable, sometimes raunchy. Nothing, however trite, escapes her wit."

And now, a few excerpts...here are some of Miss King's amusing musings on stress in America:

"The American way of stress is comparable to Freud's 'beloved symptom,' his name for the cherished neurosis that a patient cultivates like the rarest of orchids and does not want to be cured of. Stress makes Americans feel busy, important, and in demand, and simultaneously deprived, ignored, and victimized. Stress makes them feel interesting and complex instead of boring and simple, and carries an assumption of sensitivity not unlike the Old World assumption that aristocrats were high-strung. In short, stress has become a status symbol."

Nor does England escape her withering observations. Her thoughts after watching a week's worth of TV coverage on the death of Princess Diana:

"My saturation viewing helped me make a vital decision. For some time I had been thinking of emigrating to England to bring my nationality in line with my blood, but I have now abandoned the idea. There is no England, just this demi-realm, this scepter'd loony bin set in a sea of rotting flora, this U.K. of Utter Kitsch where the crud de la crud build teddybear temples to a gilded hysteric who was nothing more than Judy Garland with a title. If I must live in a country where people who once tipped their hats now tip the scales, I might as well stay home and save myself the trouble of learning to look right instead of left to avoid an oncoming hug. My hyphen, right or wrong."

I like how she summed up her writing efforts in another column:

"Being a writer has made me a lifelong practitioner of no-holds-barred insight, driven by an irresistible impulse to shovel through mountains of received bull to get to the bottom of things."

It was a said day in 2002 when Miss King wrote her final column and laid down her shovel. But at least with this volume we can keep enjoying all the digging she did.

Long live King, the Queen of Mean!

I first read this about 14 years ago and it is simply the funniest thing I have ever read in my life...ever. And I have read a LOT of funny things. Even after all these years, when I re-read the parts about the Birthing Bucket and Poore Ned's Burning you-know-what, I become weak with laughter. I remember reading this aloud to my husband and being unable to continue because I was so convulsed. This is included in The Florence King Reader and is well worth any price.

This blissfully funny novel tells the story of Isabel, an introverted writer who finds herself to her horror having to share an apartment with Polly, a humourless radical feminist who drives her crazy. Then they encounter Gloria, a medievalist with an obsession about the gruesome death of Edward the Second. Polly inherits a house in California, and they set off to travel there, on the way they gather up Agnes, an abused housewife running away from her husband, and Martha, an elderly divorcee. The book is full of wonderfully funny incidents and marvellous characters. Gloria the crazed medievalist is particularly hilarious. The part where Isabel takes a job as a writer of porno novels is hysterically funny. I wish Florence King would write a sequel, I'd love to read more about this craz bunch of characters.

When Sisterhood Was in Flower may be out of print as a single title, but it is available, in its entirety, in The Florence King Reader (which also contains excerpts from King's other books, book reviews, and uncollected essays), so mouse on over and order it. Sisterhood begins with the line "Call me Isabel.", which says a lot right there. Isabel, who has escaped from Virginia to Boston in 1971, falls in with a pair of most unlikely roommates, a cat named Quadrupet (and a pig named Farnsworth), the Don't Tread on Me feminist commune, the Sword and Scabbard porn-publishing company (don't miss their twelve author's guidelines, most of which can't be repeated in a public place), an inflatable doll, an enormous cauldron of scrapple, a raving survivalist, an Episcopalian priest -- but I don't want to give away all Isabel's secrets. I laughed out loud at Isabel's driving test, the court record involving the inflatable doll, the scarpple chase, and more scenes than I can count. Funniest thing I've read in years.

This is one of several volumes in the HarperCollins Eminent Lives series. Each offers a concise rather than comprehensive, much less definitive biography. However, just as Al Hirschfeld's illustrations of various celebrities capture their defining physical characteristics, the authors of books in this series focus on the defining influences and developments during the lives and careers of their respective subjects. In this instance, Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469-1527).

Obviously, this is not a definitive biography nor did Ross King intend it to be. However, for most readers, it provides about all of the information they need to understand the meaning and significance of this excerpt from the final chapter in King's biography: "The key to some of the ambiguities may lie in the nature of the man himself. Machiavelli's numerous undertakings - diplomat, playwright, poet, historian, political theorist, farmer, military engineer, militia captain - make him, like his friend Leonardo, a true Renaissance man. Yet, like Leonardo, who denounced the 'beastly madness' of war while devising ingenious and deadly weapons, Machiavelli is awash in paradoxes and inconsistencies...Probably his greatest contradiction was that he understood better than anyone else in the sixteenth century how to seize and maintain political power - and yet, deprived of power himself in 1512, he spent many long years in the political wilderness, making a series of bungling and fruitless attempts to regain his position."

With remarkable precision, concision, and eloquence, King examines not only Machiavelli's life and career but also the cultural, political, and religious environment in which he was so actively involved more than 500 years ago. The Prince (or The Ruler) is Machiavelli's most famous work but was not published until four years after his death, in 1531, when Pope Clement VII granted that permission to Antonio Blado. It was published together with Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy and The History of Florence. The Art of War (1520) was the only one of Machiavelli's works to be published in his lifetime. King notes that The Prince circulated in manuscript and earned for Machiavelli a certain notoriety. "'Everyone hated him because of The Prince,' one commentator observed around the time of Machiavelli's death. 'The good thought him sinful, the wicked thought him even more wicked or more capable than themselves, so that all hated him.' This was no doubt an exaggeration: Machiavelli was far better known as a popular dramatist and controversial state functionary than as the author of a tract on statecraft. Still, in the decades that followed, the hatred did indeed begin to curdle."

King points out that a well-worn edition accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte to the Battle of Waterloo and Adolph Hitler kept a copy on his bedside table. Today, many people who have never read The Prince and know little (if anything) about its author do not hesitate to invoke his name -- or at least apply it as an adjective -- to describe or repudiate any political maneuvering they perceive to be devious. However, King asserts, rather than having been uniformly demonized or unfairly misunderstood "as a preacher of the straightforward message of evil," Machiavelli has been "conscripted into service" by adherents of all manner of political causes because his thought is strangely malleable to any number of diametrically opposing ideologies and approaches."

As I hope these brief remarks indicate, I learned a great deal about Machiavelli, a man of "numerous antimonies," that I did not know before. I am grateful to Ross King for that but also for all that I learned about the extraordinarily interesting age in which Machiavelli lived, more than 500 years ago. It would be an exaggeration to suggest that King "brings it to life." No one could. But he does present material with the skills and eloquence of a storyteller...and in seamless combination with the skills of a cultural anthropologist.

Bravo!

I was pleased to see that the redoubtable Ross King (of Brunelleschi's Dome fame) was recruited for this book. For readers unfamiliar with the "Eminent Lives" series, the idea is to pair distinguished authors with interesting subjects, the result being "short biographies perfect for an age short on time."

How very 21st century.

King does an excellent job of putting Niccolo Machiavelli's life and times into perspective. Machiavelli was much more of a man of action than I had realized; he interspersed his peripatetic diplomacy for Florence with an obsession with raising and training a citizen militia. And Machiavelli was hardly the black-hearted villain so often characterized. His greatest character fault may have been obsequiousness, as epitomized by his dedicating The Prince to Lorenzo Medici (a syphilitic lout who apparently never read the book at all.)

If I had any cavil about Ross King's book, it is that The Prince is not analyzed in the kind of detail that I hoped it would be. (One supposes a short biography designed for an age short on time has its limitations.) I intend to now follow the example of rapper Tupac Shakur, who read The Prince while imprisoned in 1995, and subsequently gave himself the moniker "Makaveli." (How much cooler than "Puffy" is that?)

Also recommended: Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (Eminent Lives)

This is one of the funniest, and most accurate, books ever written on the once-dominant Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture in America. Weighted to the South (though not so much as King's Southern Ladies and Gentlemen) because of Miss King's Anglo-Southron Washington DC area up-bringing, she explores in her inimitable "pointing up" style a vast number of the details of WASPiness that are common knowledge among WASPs, at least those who are "old stock" WASPs, but utterly unknown to most Catholics (who may be Anglo-Saxon) and non-Anglo-Saxon ethnics -- even those of Northern European stock who generally "pass" as WASPs.

If any part of your family comes from the sorts of backgrounds described in the book, you will immediately recognize the types among your relatives. I found a dozen or so, which seems typical. I've given away, or lent and had not returned, probably a dozen copies of this lamentably out-of-print book over the past 20 years since I was first introduced to it by an Episcopal seminarian (how appropriate!)

One of Miss King's most seminal services for non-WASPs in this book is her (now somewhat dated) explication of the varieties of Protestantism, and particularly the fact that in many cases denominational affiliation has less to do with specific doctrine than social background and ethnicity.

I honestly believe this to be a book that every serious student of American society should read with care.

A superb read - especially the last section on Lizzie Borden, pointing up the WASPishness of the whole thing, even unto the disgusting food (and sanitary) habits of this family, which would be enough to make anyone snap.