Based on dozens of interviews and abundant archival sources, scholar and author Kaplan\u2019s book offers a perceptive, sympathetic biography of activist, unabashed communist, and muckraker Jessica Mitford (1917-1996). Jessica, known as Decca, was defiant even as a child\u2014unlike her sisters Nancy, who became a well-known novelist; Nazi sympathizers Diana and Unity; Deborah, who married a duke; and Pamela, who retreated to the countryside. Growing up, the Mitford girls formed a \u201csavage little tribe,\u201d overseen by nannies they exuberantly terrorized. Their parents \u201ccalled everything outside of their home \u2018Elsewhere\u2019 and pronounced themselves against it.\u201d Critical of privilege, Decca kept a \u201crunning-away\u201d bank account, which she used to join her second cousin, Esmond Romilly, a nephew of Winston Churchill, to fight fascists in Spain. She was 21 when they married. Never having lived on her own, she did not know how to cook, clean, or even wash her underwear. Nevertheless, she took on challenges with charm, optimism, and a \u201cstubborn embrace of difficulty, contradictions, and mess.\u201d And there were many difficulties: Her first child died of measles; Esmond, a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot, was shot down during World War II; a son was hit by a truck and died. But Decca rallied. After Esmond\u2019s death, she got a job in Washington, D.C., at the Office of Price Administration, where she showed a talent for \u201cin-depth research, joy in exposing corruption, [and] delight in involving collaborators,\u201d all of which she used to great effect in her first book, a bestselling expos\u00e9 of the funeral business, The American Way of Death. Her second husband was a Jewish lawyer from the Bronx, as committed an activist as she was. Kaplan captures Decca\u2019s energy and verve, her complicated relationship with her aristocratic family, and her unwavering devotion to fighting injustice, racism, and inequality.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Based on dozens of interviews and abundant archival sources, scholar and author Kaplan\u2019s book offers a perceptive, sympathetic biography of activist, unabashed communist, and muckraker Jessica Mitford (1917-1996). Jessica, known as Decca, was defiant even as a child\u2014unlike her sisters Nancy, who became a well-known novelist; Nazi sympathizers Diana and Unity; Deborah, who married a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4950,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4949"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}