Death by Fame: A Life of Elisabeth, Empress of Austria

Rating:
Summary: death by fame -Empress Elizabeth of Austria
Review: It's a good book, but there's something wrong in the pictures! There is a picture in the middle of the book that shows the Empress Elizabeth of Austria with two of her dogs... but... THAT'S NOT THE EMPRESS! It's her youngest sister "Sophie".

Rating:
Summary: Shameless.
Review: This book has a beautiful dustjacket. Inside, however, it's primarily a rehash of secondary sources with little new information and few fresh insights about the puzzling character of Elisabeth, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary. The Princess Diana comparison seems like a hasty add-on after her death, not original and not well-developed or thoughtful. It seems like a last-minute pre-publication shameless capitalization on a tragedy for the sake of garnering some book sales through sensationalization. I wish I could have read the version that went to the publishers prior to the accident in the tunnel in Paris, I'm sure it would have been much less annoying.

Rating:
Summary: VERY POORLY DONE
Review: Why another biography of Elisabeth of Austria, dozens having been previously written (some the size of a Mitchner opus), if the author has nothing new to add or not even a better way of telling what's been told many times before. This book has neither, and the author has created an inferior work to all those far more excellent ones at your local library. His only fresh approach is a dubious and tasteless tie-in to Diana-mania. It is just too contrived and amateurish. The fact that Kirkus, a highly political organ, has given it a good review is due to the author having a prominent place in the elite and liberal literary community it is comprised of and promotes.