About Unwise Passions
“Imagine Gone With the Wind if Eugene O’Neill had written it, add a spoonful to Alexis de Tocqueville, a suspicion of incest and murder, many great names and reversals of fortune, and you have this love-hate-mystery tale of political history.”
—Weekly Standard
“…an engaging work of popular history. …We are indebted to Alan Pell Crawford for rescuing [Nancy Randolph] from undeserved oblivion.”
—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
“…a delectable scandal that features an all-star cast”
—Joseph Ellis
“…splendid—history in the grand manner!”
—Max Byrd, Jefferson
“There is nothing so yummy as history that reads like a novel, a book in which the historian has the grace and skill with language to evoke not only the dress and actions of a period but the passions of the people who inhabited and created it…a Must Read for anyone who wants an inside story of the early struggles of our country and of a remarkable true heroine.”
—The Washington Times
“Entertaining and often poignant. Crawford presents the evidence with grace and wit.”
—The American Enterprise
“Reminiscent of both John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and James Fox’s White Mischief, Crawford’s book is more than simply an interesting addition to Virginiana. Unwise Passions blends social history, politics and mystery into what should become a classic work of scholarship.”
—The Richmond Times-Dispatch
“…run—don’t walk—to your nearest bookstore and buy a copy of Unwise Passions. Thoroughly researched and entertainingly written, the book is a meticulously documented account of the sensational Randolph scandal…the recounting of which is so vivid I couldn’t put the book down until I had read it in one sitting.”
—Norfolk Virginian-Pilot
“Crawford addresses his subject with a historian’s accuracy, and he generously spices his text with rich and gossipy details … Crawford crafts an elegant, true history with intelligence and grace.”
—Raleigh News & Observer
“The events [Crawford] recounts may not have been major ones in American history, but their telling casts light on many issues—not just on the condition of the Old South, but also on the status of women, the uncertain state of medical knowledge, the complex threads of family life, the power of gossip and innuendo, the tempestuous state of politics in the republic’s early days, and the skullduggery and fortitude of which people were (and presumably still are) capable.”
—American History