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“Absorbing, well-written, and meticulously researched…Baatz delves deeper than ever before into the event’s judicial, popular, and psychiatric dimensions and ramifications.”
— Mike Wallace, Pulitzer Prize–winning author
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“Baatz has resurrected a forgotten saga of lust, lucre, and lunacy that would seem improbable if it were merely fiction… packed with action, surprises and a quasi-happy ending.”
— USA Today
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“A terrifically entertaining work of popular history: swiftly paced, richly evocative, engrossing from the first page…The murder of Stanford White has been the subject of many other books [but] Baatz’s gripping, deeply researched retelling is certain to stand as the definitive version.”
— Wall Street Journal
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“The history of a crime of passion that revealed the sordid underside of the Gilded Age…Baatz takes a fresh—though groundbreaking—look at the scandal, drawing mostly on newspaper reports to create a fast-paced narrative.”
— Kirkus Reviews
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“Readers will appreciate Baatz’s exciting, novel-like approach, and those interested in early twentieth-century law especially will enjoy the courtroom scenes.”
— Booklist
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“Baatz…aims to document and just as thoroughly vivify what really happened.”
— Library Journal
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Baatz has resurrected a forgotten saga of lust, lucre and lunacy that would seem improbable if it were merely fiction. . . . This true-life theater is packed with action [and] surprises.
— David Holahan, USA Today (3 out of 4 stars)
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A gripping book that is nearly impossible to put down . . . Baatz has crafted a book that reads more like a novel than a historical tome. Peppered with historical photos and with prose that paints a wonderful picture of New York City at the dawn of the 20th century, The Girl on the Velvet Swing brings the characters to life again.
— Under the Radar
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Readers will appreciate Baatz's exciting, novel-like approach, and those interested in early twentieth-century law especially will enjoy the courtroom scenes.
— Booklist
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Simon Baatz has written a wickedly enjoyable book that enthralled me from start to finish. This multifaceted tale, rendered with an expert's touch, encompasses the aspirations and vices of an entire era.
— Laurence Bergreen, author of Capone
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Simon Baatz, the absolute master of the true crime genre, has written another page-turner. This book has everything, bad behavior in high places, a spectacularly public murder, courtroom drama, a daring escape, even a mother-in-law from hell. It reads like fiction, but it's all real. A wonderful book.
— John Steele Gordon, author of An Empire of Wealth
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Simon Baatz takes readers on the strange and sensational legal odyssey of Harry Thaw, the Pittsburgh millionaire who murdered famed architect Stanford White in 1906. . . Baatz offers a detailed and assiduously researched account of the shocking crime and its aftermath, with a focus on the legal wrangling that dominated two trials.
— Paula Uruburu, author of American Eve
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In his absorbing, well-written, and meticulously researched account of the murder of Stanford White, Simon Baatz delves deeper than ever before into the event's judicial, popular, and psychiatric dimensions and ramifications.
— Mike Wallace, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning Gotham
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The Girl on the Velvet Swing is a must-read, a book that is ceaselessly engaging, one surprise following another, even to the author's final assessment of Stanford White and his relationship to Evelyn Nesbit.
— Leland Roth, author of American Architecture and the critical study "McKim, Mead & White"