"If money allied to class spawns the most powerful social beings on earth, the women portrayed in Alfred Allan Lewis's Ladies and Not-So-Gentle Women give new meaning to the word power. For Elisabeth Marbury, Elsie de Wolfe, Anne Morgan and Anne Vanderbilt - the four remarkable women at the heart of this book - power meant not only the ability to live successful, personally satisfying lives but also the means to transform the world in which they lived.".

"Elisabeth Marbury created a role for herself as the world's first woman theatrical/literary agent and invented the American musical comedy; her companion for most of her life, Elsie de Wolfe, became the first woman interior decorator. Anne Morgan, daughter of J. P.

Morgan, put her money to good use by building residential clubs to ease the conditions of working women, while Anne Vanderbilt single-handedly did more for the American war effort in France than many government relief organizations and began the first drug-control program in the United States. Together with their achievements, Lewis paints intimate portraits of their individual lives, with all the follies, excesses, tragedies, joys and passions of the day."--BOOK JACKET.