Primates of Park Avenue a memoir
Like an urban Dian Fossey, Wednesday Martin decodes the primate social behaviors of Upper East Side mothers in a memoir about her adventures assimilating into that most secretive and elite tribe. After marrying a man from the Upper East Side and moving to the neighborhood, Wednesday Martin struggled...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Simon & Schuster,
2015.
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| Edition: | First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition. |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Go to Downloadable eBook Here. |
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| Summary: | Like an urban Dian Fossey, Wednesday Martin decodes the primate social behaviors of Upper East Side mothers in a memoir about her adventures assimilating into that most secretive and elite tribe. After marrying a man from the Upper East Side and moving to the neighborhood, Wednesday Martin struggled to fit in. Drawing on her background in anthropology and primatology, she tried looking at her new world through that lens, and suddenly things fell into place. She understood the other mothers' snobbiness at school drop-off when she compared them to olive baboons. Her obsessional quest for a Hermes Birkin handbag made sense when she realized other females wielded them to establish dominance in their troop. And so she analyzed tribal migration patterns; display rituals; physical adornment, mutilation, and mating practices; extra-pair copulation; and more. Every city has its Upper East Side, and in Wednesday's memoir, readers everywhere will recognize the strange cultural codes of powerful social hierarchies and the compelling desire to climb them. They will also see that Upper East Side mothers want the same things for their children that all mothers want -- safety, happiness, and success -- and not even sky-high penthouses and chauffeured SUVs can protect this ecologically released tribe from the universal experiences of anxiety and loss. When Wednesday's life turns upside down, she learns how deep the bonds of female friendship really are. |
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| Physical Description: | vii, 248 pages : maps ; 22 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 243-246). |
| ISBN: | 9781476762623 (hardcover) 1476762627 (hardcover) |
| Author Notes: | Wednesday Martin is an American author who grew up in Michigan and received a doctorate in comparative studies from Yale University in 1996. Martin taught cultural studies and literature at Yale, The New School for Social Research and Baruch College. She worked in qualitative market research and advertising for several years. She is a blogger, and commenter on parenting, step-parenting, and popular culture. She has written for Psychology Today, the New York Post, The Daily Telegraph, The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Fitness, Glamour, TIME and The Huffington Post. She is the author of three books: the instant #1 New York Times bestseller Primates of Park Avenue and Stepmonster, and Marlene Dietrich. (Bowker Author Biography) |
