All the Rage: Stories from the Frontline of Beauty: A History of Pain, Pleasure, and Power: 1860-1960
Ms. Nicholson never blames women for concentrating on their looks ... Balancing wide-ranging research with lively storytelling, Ms. Nicholson doesn’t merely humanize history, she makes it fun ... The author effortlessly pulls from all manner of histories and periodicals, fiction and film, and quotes from the memoirs of women famous and obscure.
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Lively, intimate ... Here, beauty is sometimes an oppressive force, and sometimes a way for women to negotiate their way around other oppressive forces ... A conclusion bringing the commentary up to the present day is the weakest part of the book, feeling overstuffed and rushed.
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Captivating ... Many of her other quick case studies are now as dated as the fashions they exhibited ... All the Rage is full of pictures, but it’s Nicholson’s prose that illuminates it throughout. The subject of the social forces behind fashion has of course had a small library of books written about it, but this is the liveliest and shrewdest example to appear in the popular market so far this year.
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