Play Audiobook Sample
I'll build a Stairway to Paradise: A Life of Bunny Mellon Audiobook
Play Audiobook Sample
(5.00) - 1 listener ratings
Quick Stats About this Audiobook
Total Audiobook Chapters:
Longest Chapter Length:
Shortest Chapter Length:
Average Chapter Length:
Audiobooks by this Author:
Publisher Description
Bunny Mellon, whose life was marked by astonishing good fortune as well as tragedy and scandal, remains a singular figure in the annals of American design. She had her finger on the pulse of American culture and possessed a rare sense of style and grace. Her most celebrated work—the White House Rose Garden—demonstrated how formal restraint and the sparing use of color could be deployed to maximal effect.
In I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise, Mac Griswold—who knew Mellon personally—delves into her subject's closely-guarded personal archives to construct an unrivaled portrait of a woman as complex and multifaceted as the gardens and homes on which she left her mark. This book explores the tension between Mellon's idea of herself as a "poor little rich girl" and her own enterprising spirit. Mellon tested the anodyne 1950s model of woman as-wife-as-mother by getting a divorce, admitting candidly to her first husband that she wanted a richer one. She imperiously traded old friends for new, and ultimately used her reputation, her connections, and above all her money to help fund John Edwards's short-lived presidential campaign.
How Mellon's character, style, and taste developed together to produce her greatest accomplishments—private and public—is the real subject of this biography.
Download and start listening now!
"Loved the detail on the gardens and everything about the life of this wealthy person"
— Nana of blueeyes (5 out of 5 stars)
I'll build a Stairway to Paradise Listener Reviews
Be the first to write a review about this audiobook!
About Mac Griswold
Mac Griswold is a cultural landscape historian and the author of Washington’s Gardens at Mount Vernon and The Golden Age of American Gardens. She has won a Guggenheim Fellowship and has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Travel + Leisure. She lives in Sag Harbor, New York.
About Christa Lewis
Christa Lewis has narrated over two hundred audiobooks. She is a classically trained actress with a four-year conservatory training in voice and acting. She has a smart and funny vibe, but can also meet the moment in straightforward or somber works of nonfiction thanks to a seventeen-year stint as a newsreader. Christa speaks accent-free German fluently and offers a variety of believable accents and dialects. Her narrations are well received—there have been seven Earphones awards across a variety of genres—YA, literary fiction, biography and memoir—a 2019 SOVAS Voice Arts Award in Biography and two Audie nominations. Pippa Jayne was the Sultry Listeners’ Award Winner 2019 in the Erotica category.