{"product_id":"2940170470396","title":"Wondrous Beauty: The Life and Adventures of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte","description":"From the award-winning historian: the remarkable life of \"the most beautiful woman of nineteenth-century Baltimore,\" whose marriage in 1803 to JErome Bonaparte, the youngest brother of Napoleon, became inextricably bound to the diplomatic and political nineteenth-century histories of the United States, France, and England. From the author of Revolutionary Mothers (\"Incisive, thoughtful, spiced with vivid anecdotes. Don't miss it.\"-Thomas Fleming) and Civil War Wives (\"Utterly freshSensitive, poignant, thoroughly fascinating.\"-Jay Winik). \u003cbr\u003eIn Wondrous Beauty, Carol Berkin tells the story of this audacious, outsize life: how her romantic, passionate marriage infuriated Napoleon and resulted in his banning the then-pregnant Betsy Bonaparte from disembarking in any European port, demanding that his brother either lose all power and remain married to that \"American girl\"-or renounce her, marry a woman of Napoleon's choice, and reap the benefits. JErome ended the marriage and was made king of Westphalia; Betsy fled to England, and gave birth to her son and only child, JErome's namesake. Berkin writes how this naIve, headstrong American girl returned to Baltimore a cynical, independent woman, refusing to seek social redemption and return to obscurity through a quiet marriage to a member of Baltimore's merchant class; how she disdained America's obsession with money-making, its growing ethos of democracy, and the rigid gender roles that confined women to the parlor and the nursery, and sought a European society where women created salons devoted to intellectual life and where traditions of aristocracy dominated society; and, we see how as a shrewd investor she transformed a modest pension from the French government into a fortune that rivaled many a (male) financier.","brand":"Recorded Books, LLC","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47099926315248,"sku":"2940170470396","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940170470396_p0.jpg?v=1763710564","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940170470396","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}