Laura's review of Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge
Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (P.S.) by Eleanor Herman
I picked up this book a few years ago because of an article in the magazine Mental Floss , and enjoyed it as a light and somewhat fluff read. I just reread it and remember that there are some large problems with it. The organization is really awful, the chapters pretend to be about large categories but are conversational and don't seem to be held together much. The author skips from anecdotes about one mistress to anecdotes about a mistress from hundreds of years previously, in fact, all of the information about one woman can only be found by reading the wholebook. I personally would have prefered to read the whole section about each king at once, and it would have curbed the author's tendancy to call a mistress meek one sentance and describe her temper tantrums in another.
The author also has a hard time seperating opinion from facts, of course a difficult problem when dealing with uncertain historical information, yet she deems Madame Pompadour as frigid, Wallis Simpson as...more
The author also has a hard time seperating opinion from facts, of course a difficult problem when dealing with uncertain historical information, yet she deems Madame Pompadour as frigid, Wallis Simpson as...more
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