Infinite Books

Dispatches from the Gilded Age by Julia Reed is a collection of 33 essays divided by subject into seven parts. It’s a good read, especially when you don’t have the energy for literature that requires concentration.

The essay which made a lasting impression on me was the one on Helen Prejean, an eighty-two-year-old nun from Baton Rouge and the author of Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States who worked to stop the death penalty. I think that anyone who reads Dispatches from the Gilded Age should, first of all, read this essay. Julia Reed states: “I thought I believed in the death penalty, but I read the manuscript of her book anyway – trailing pages through airports across the country as I flew on a series of planes – and by the time I’d reached my destination, the conviction of a lifetime had been overturned”.

Another fascinating, although entirely different essay, is the one on Madeleine Albright, former US secretary of state who just left us on March 23, 2022. There is also an entertaining and inspiring text on André Leon Talley, an American fashion journalist who was the first African-American male creative director of Vogue. And I must also mention a fashion essay that emphasizes the importance of red lipstick. It is such a fun piece!

Good stories about interesting personalities, a few serious topics, and relaxing themes of fashion – all sprinkled with a pinch of humor – this is Julia Reed’s recipe for a good book that can give the reader a moment of respite from the never-ending and often overwhelming problems of the world around us.  

Dispatches from the Gilded Age: A Few More Thoughts on Interesting People, Far-Flung Places, and the Joys of Southern Comforts by Julia Reed, published by St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 2022