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It shouldn't be a fascinating read, this book--it really shouldn't. It's just higher gossip about how Wallis Simpson took a younger lover after her marriage to Edward, and how she and said lover enjoyed nights of "nonpenetrative and principally oral sex." I mean, who cares? Shouldn't our minds be on higher things?
The trouble is, it's all absolutely fascinating. The lover was the mad, bad, and dangerous-to-know Jimmy Donahue: grandson of Woolworth's founder Frank W. Woolworth, heir to millions, and considered to be dashingly good-looking. (From the photos in the book, he looks a bit like a baby-faced bore, but maybe having those millions in the bank skewed perceptions of him, somewhat.) Donahue could fly a plane, could speak several languages, was a marvelous raconteur, and, on top of all this, was a promiscuous homosexual. That didn't stop him from forming a passionate friendship with Wallis, however, that soon turned into more than mere friendship. Wilson suggests that this constituted, on Wallis's part, perhaps "the greatest betrayal in history." Edward gave up his throne and kingdom for the woman he loved, only to have her take off with another man. However, it was never quite so simple as this. Edward didn't want a normal sexual relationship with Wallis, really--he got all of the satisfaction he wanted from playing with her feet--while she evidently continued to adore him, even if she found that the need for sexual satisfaction drove her into Donahue's arms. It might even have been that Edward knew, but didn't mind. The whole thing reads like some kind of royal soap opera, and, as such, it's absolutely riveting. --Christopher Hart, Amazon.co.uk
Book Description
The story of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor is one of the most romantic of all time: Edward VIII abdicated his throne and gave up an empire so that he could marry the woman he loved, American divorcee Wallis Simpson. Very few people suspected, and even fewer actually knew, that the Duchess cuckolded him-and almost gave him up-for a gay playboy twenty years her junior.Blond and slender, Jimmy Donahue was the archetypal post-war playboy. He could fly a plane, speak several languages, play the piano, and tell marvelous jokes. People loved him for his wit, charm and personality. The grandson of millionaire Frank W. Woolworth, Jimmy knew he would never need to work. Instead, he set about carving for himself a career of mischief. Some said evil. Gay at a time when the homosexual act was still illegal, Jimmy was notorious within America's upper class, and loved to shock. Though press agents arranged for him to be seen with female escorts, his pursuits, until he met the Duchess of Windsor, were exclusively homosexual. He was thirty-five when he was befriended by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in 1950. The Duchess was fifty-four, and despite the difference in age, there was an instant attraction. A burgeoning sexual relationship - a perverse sort of love - was formed between Jimmy and the Duchess. Together with the Duke, they became an inseparable trio, the closest of friends. As Jimmy had planned, the royal couple became obsessed with him.With information from surviving contemporaries, Dancing with the Devil is the extraordinary tale of three remarkable people and their unique and twisted relationship.
Customer Reviews:
Good writing..........2003-05-22
But, the story is so tawdry & Jimmy Donahue so scurvy, it's a hard read. The author presents information about his upbringing that tries to make you feel a little sympathy for Donahue but it's hard to feel sympathy for such a loser. The Duke & Duchess of Windsor were wastes of human beings, too. The more you read about them the more discouraged you get. What wasted opportunities! They could have done so much good but were such selfish, self-centered & STUPID people. No wonder the Royal Family can't stand to hear their names mentioned. The book reads kind of like a prolonged Dominick Dunne article in Vanity Fair.
Take it to the beach..........2003-02-08
OK, so the author isn't going to win the Nobel Prize for Literature for this book. But why should he? It's a book about an affair. A tawdry affair at that.
Initially, I payed attention to the other reviewers and didn't buy the book. But I have a fascination with Wallis and Edward (as vapid as they might have been...)and wanted to know more about Wallis' relationship with Jimmy Donohue. I must have read at least 10 to 15 books about the couple, and despite what the one of the reviewers said, I've only come across a few rare references to him. This book fills in the gaps.
So is it great literature? No. Is it an interesting book? Yes, if you like the subject matter, and know something about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to begin with. I enjoyed the book.
I'd had hopes, but..........2001-03-27
This book doesn't do much more than re-hash rumor, gossip and innuendo--and some facts--that I've already read in better-written, more thorough and scholarly biographies of the Windsors. I didn't notice any glaring inaccuracies; on the other hand, I didn't notice that the author broke any new ground. He seems to have relied heavily on previously published biographies of the Duke, the Duchess, and the British Royal Family in general, all of which a serious Windsorite will have already read. Also--let's face it--we read books like this one to be titillated, and the author fails utterly to titillate us. Save your money.
Juicy subject, Pedestrian treatment.......2001-01-26
You'd think an author couldn't go wrong with this cast of characters, ultra chic jet set locations, and deliciously lewd sex play. But Christopher Wilson took all this potential and and threw it away with the writing style of a schoolboy whose book report was carelessly dashed off before class. Repetitive adjectives, lackluster prose, and unintelligible chapter beginnings and ends - I was hollering for the editor the entire read. I kept saying aloud "OK, that's a start, but now let's unearth some real dish, and show me the proof!" Gossip CAN be transformed into history with proper scholarship. This promising biography of three fascinatingly spoiled and twisted people disappointed me.
Wonderful!.......2001-01-16
3Dancing With the Devil : The Windsors and Jimmy Donahue2 is a sweeping adventure of scandal and euphoria among glitzy cafe society, adeptly brought to life by biographer Christopher Wilson.
In this case, the name 3Donahue,2 is directly related to a very famous name: Woolworth. When 35 & 102 chainstore mogul Frank Winfield Woolworth died in 1919, he left as part of his substantial legacy great hopes for his cherubic grandchildren. He visualized his heirs evolving into hardworking, benefic, God-fearing, and rational adults. But alas, if he did happen to look down from the heavens years later, I know that several of his descendants would have provoked a disgruntled sigh; including the spendthrift, serial divorcee Barbara Hutton...
But the mischievous, downright extraordinary exploits of his grandson Jimmy Donahue would have sent Woolworth longing for Divine intervention. The fact is that, the only thing Frank Woolworth and his grandson Jimmy shared (other than a notable gene pool) was a compulsion for the spotlight.
That compulsion, along with a host of others (some advantageous, most unsavory) are unveiled in this wonderful, fast-paced book. In Dancing With the Devil, we meet dashing Jimmy Donahue, a man who had entirely too much free time on his hands, and entirely too much money at his disposal. We learn that Jimmy1s access to money, along with his excessive adoration for luxury, his psychological baggage (he even witnessed the suicide of his manic depressive and bisexual father) and the questionable role model Jimmy found in his jetsetting mother --all combined to create an intriguing, complex and colorful personality. Wilson depicts an international playboy who defied reigning sexual taboos and balked at authority, yet was sometimes ridden by deep guilt. Donahue exhibited such random amounts of innocent rakishness and sensual greed; of hearfelt generosity and rash wastefulness-- that even his closest contemporaries were not sure what to think of him.
Wilson expertly peppers his historical accounts with authentic detail, smoothly leading us into post WWII Paris, then sweeping us back to the United States to the playgrounds of Palm Beach and Long Island. Clearly, Wilson did a great deal of research on this book, conducting scores of interviews and tracking down hard to find information.
Of course, Wilson1s readers are also treated to little known details about the odd triangle between Jimmy Donahue and the Windsors, thus providing an interesting account of the last untold episode in their lives.
As in Jimmy Donahue1s life, there is nary a dull moment in Dancing With the Devil. (Do check out the 3Acknowledgments2 which reads like a Who1s Who in and of itself). Definitely recommended!
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Dancing with the Devil: The Windsors and Jimmy Donahue
Christopher Wilson
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
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ASIN: 000257103X |
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The Sources of Military Change: Culture, Politics, Technology (Making Sense of Global Security)
Manufacturer: Lynne Rienner Publishers
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1555879756 |
Book Description
The authors analyze abortion and death penalty decisions by the Supreme Court and argue that they provide prime examples of abrupt legal change. After proposing that the strength of legal arguments has at least as much impact on Court decisions as do public opinion and justices' political beliefs, they focus on the way litigators propel certain issues onto the Court's agenda and seek to persuade the justices to affect legal change.
Book Description
A companion volume to The Endangered Species Act at Thirty: Renewing
the Conservation Promise, published by Island Press in fall 2005, this
new book examines the key policy tools available for protecting biodiversity
in the United States by revisiting some basic questions in conservation:
What are we trying to protect and why? What are the limits
of species-based conservation? Can we develop new conservation
strategies that are more ecologically and economically viable than past
approaches?
Book Description
The definitive guide to the world's most recognized butterfly.
Monarch butterflies are widely distributed around the world. The two most distinct populations are located in North America -- one to the east and the other to the west of the Rocky Mountains.
Their wide distribution, coupled with their vivid orange, white and black coloring makes the monarch the most recognizable butterfly. Regrettably, in recent years, ecological changes -- specifically the loss of its feeding grounds -- are threatening the monarch's existence.
The Last Monarch Butterfly provides a thorough and essential overview of these delightful creatures and helps readers to understand their plight. The book documents the monarch's life cycle to provide a clear understanding of its natural condition including its migratory nature. Easy-to-understand text is illustrated with thirty bright, colorful photographs.
The western butterfly winters in California and the eastern butterfly winters in Mexico. Natural disasters such as a recent cold snap in Mexico imperil the already depleted monarch populations. Areas in California that once hosted the monarch are now being used for residential and industrial development. Even the vast fields of flowering weeds that supported the monarch in the northern states are depleted for new development.
The Last Monarch Butterfly is the definitive environmental reference on this endangered species.
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States of Nature: Conserving Canada's Wildlife in the Twentieth Century (Nature/History/Society)
Tina Loo
Manufacturer: Published with UBC Press
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0295986549 |
Book Description
If Canadian conservationists had had their way at the turn of the twentieth century, their country would have been the place Americans looked to when they sang yearningly of a home where the buffalo roamed. With the proper measures, Canada could have been a haven for North America's wild animals, a place where remnant populations devastated by settlement and development would recover and flourish. The country's treatment of wildlife became a way for some Canadians to distinguish themselves from their southern neighbors. For others, it embodied a different kind of ecological consciousness, one that reconciled human needs with those of wildlife. For them, Canada could be home to people as well as a place where wild things lived and played. States of Nature is the first book to tell the story of efforts to save Canada's wildlife, looking at the changing substance, aims, and impacts of the conservation initiatives undertaken by government as well as private organizations and individuals during the twentieth century, before the emergence of the modern environmental movement.
Book Description
-- World Conservation Union
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Conserving Wildlife
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
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Sharing Nature With Children (20th Anniversary Edition, Revised and Expanded)
ASIN: 0231079672 |
Book Description
This volume explores fifteen exemplary education and communication programs that have contributed to the conservation of wildlife and natural resources around the world, presenting the perspectives necessary to confront the unbated extinction of animal and plant species and increasing human pressure on tropical and temperate forests, wetlands, and marine environments. Includes documented examples of conservation education programs, with sections on planning, implementing, and assessing each program.
Book Description
Conserving Living Natural Resources is an introductory textbook for students of conservation biology and resource management. It presents the historical and conceptual contexts of three seminal approaches to the management of living natural resources: utilitarian management for harvest of featured species and control of unwanted species, protection and restoration of populations and habitats to maintain biodiversity, and management of complex ecosystems to sustain both productivity and biodiversity. Rather than endorsing a single approach as the only correct one, this book investigates the historical and philosophical contexts, conceptual frameworks, principal techniques, and the limitations of each approach.
Customer Reviews:
She is a genius!.......2002-05-04
This is a most magnificent book! The author obviously is a genius! If you buy only one book in your entire life, buy this one.
This book examines three approaches to resource management, not the usual two. Wow, a lot of work went into this superb book.
I highly recommend it!
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Ducks in the Wild: Conserving Waterfowl and Their Habitats
Paul A. Johnsgard
Manufacturer: Macmillan General Reference
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0671850075 |
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Blue Genes: Sharing and Conserving the Worlds Aquatic Biodiversity
David Greer , and
Brian Harvey
Manufacturer: Earthscan Publications Ltd.
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ASIN: 1844071057 |
Book Description
* The first book to address the ownership, governance, and trade in aquatic biogenetic resources
* A must-have book for policymakers, academics, and practitioners dealing with genetic resources
* Provides powerful policy recommendations for governing, conserving, and using aquatic genetic resources for the common good
Genetic sciences have produced a â€~blue revolution’ in the way we use aquatic biodiversity. By 2020 the world will be eating more farmed than wild fish, marine bacteria may yield the cure for cancer and deep-sea bacteria may be exploited to gobble up oil spills. Science is moving ahead at a staggering speed, and the demand for genetic resources is growing rapidly--yet governance and policy lag far behind.
This groundbreaking work is the first to look at the issues of ownership, governance and trade in aquatic genetic resources. Blue Genes describes the growing demand for aquatic genetic resources and the desperate need to fill the policy vacuum for the management and conservation of aquatic biodiversity as a foundation for rules governing access to and use of aquatic genetic resources. The book pays special attention to the rights of indigenous and local communities providing access to those resources, and their role in managing and conserving aquatic biodiversity. The book concludes with policy recommendations specifically tailored to aquatic resources and uses six case studies from four continents to illustrate key issues.
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Conserving Biodiversity in Agricultural Landscapes: Model based Planning Tools
Robert K Swihart , and
Jeffrey E Moore
Manufacturer: Purdue University Press
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1557533334 |
Book Description
Habitat loss and fragmentation arguably pose the greatest threats to biological diversity. Agriculture is a dominant land use that, along with urban sprawl and residential development, can reduce the amount and connectedness of natural areas required by many native species. Unfortunately, progress has been slow in integrating nature and biodiversity protection into community planning in intensively farmed regions, especially in America 's heartland. Seldom do issues related to species conservation receive consideration during local planning activities. Lack of progress stems partly from scientific inadequacies in understanding the dynamics of complex landscapes, and from a lack of engagement of non-scientific stakeholders by scientists and modelers. The result of these shortcomings is a critical disconnect of conservation issues from the planning infrastructure. This book provides a blueprint for advancing conceptual understanding of conservation in agricultural regions. It accomplishes this with a two-pronged approach: first, by developing spatially structured models that acknowledge the link between socio-economic drivers of land-use change and the dynamics of species occupying agricultural landscapes with abrupt changes in land cover (i.e., sharp edges); and second, by providing guidelines and examples to enable scientists to effectively engage stakeholders in participatory learning and planning activities that integrate biodiversity with other, more traditional considerations. The structure of the book is truly interdisciplinary, linking the efforts of ecologists, economists, statisticians, mathematicians, and land-use specialists.
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