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Glitz, Glam, and a Damn Good Time

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What to expect

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NPR BOOKS WE LOVE 2025 PICK

A thrilling biography of Mamie Fish that explores how women used parties and social gatherings to gain power and prestige, from the author of Madame Restell and Get Well Soon.

"As entertaining as it is illuminating ... Wright is a brilliant social observer and she knows how to tell a rollicking story. An utter joy to read." —Erin Carlson, bestselling author of No Crying in Baseball

Marion Graves Anthon Fish, known by the nicknames “Mamie” and “The Fun-Maker,” threw the most epic parties in American history. This Gilded Age icon brought it all: lavish decor; A-list invitees; booze; pranks; and large animal guest stars. If you were a member of New York high society in the Peak Age of Innocence Era, you simply had to be on Mamie Fish’s guest list.

Mamie Fish understood that people didn’t just need the formality of prior generations—they needed wit and whimsy. Make no mistake, however: Mamie Fish’s story is about so much more than partying. In Glitz, Glam, and a Damn Good Time, readers will learn all about how Fish and her friends shaped the line of history, exerting their influence on business, politics, family relationships, and social change through elaborate social gatherings. I

n a time when women couldn’t even own property, let alone run for office, if women wanted any of the things men got outside the home—glory, money, attention, social networking, leadership roles—they had to do it by throwing a decadent soiree or chairing a cotillion. To ensure people would hear and remember what she had to say, Mamie Fish lived her whole life at Volume 10, becoming famous not by playing the part of a saintly helpmeet, but by letting her demanding, bitchy, hilarious, dramatic freak flag fly.

It's time to let modern readers in on the fun, the fabulousness, and the absolute ferocity that is Ms. Stuyvesant Fish—and her inimitable legacy.

"Packed with impeccable research, singing prose, and delicious wit, this story of a Gilded Age queen of revelry once again proves Jennifer Wright a master storyteller." —Jane Borden, author of Cults Like Us

Author Jennifer Wright
Narrator Ashlie Atkinson
Duration 8 hours and 51 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781668649718
Format Audiobook
Publisher Hachette Audio
Genre Biography: arts and entertainment, Biography: general, Biography: historical, political and military, Gender studies: women and girls, History of the Americas, Social and cultural history
Availability US

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