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Dead End Gene Pool by Wendy Burden
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Dead End Gene Pool

Best Seller
Dead End Gene Pool by Wendy Burden
Paperback $16.00
Mar 01, 2011 | ISBN 9781592406067

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  • $16.00

    Mar 01, 2011 | ISBN 9781592406067

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  • Apr 01, 2010 | ISBN 9781101186183

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Product Details

Praise

“In this dark and humorous memoir, Wendy Burden takes us inside the family circus that was her side of the Vanderbilt dynasty, bringing American class structure, sibling rivalry, and the decline of the blue bloods vividly to life. It’s a wonderful read.”
-Gus Van Sant

“An extremely funny writer”
The New York Times

“It provides a compelling window into a life you’re glad you didn’t have to live, and the woman who survived it, sense of humor intact.”
Boston Globe

“Charles Addams meets Carrie Bradshaw in this honest, sardonic, and touching memoir. Burden’s tale makes for riveting and often hilarious reading.”
-Jane Stanton Hitchcock, New York Times bestselling author of Social Crimes and Mortal Friends

“Burden’s acknowledgment that she is focusing her memoir on her father’s family (Vanderbilt heirs) because “rich people behaving badly are far more interesting than the not so rich behaving badly” reassures us at the outset that this will not be another standard-issue poor- little-rich-girl memoir. After her father’s suicide when Burden was six, she spends her childhood largely ignored, shuttling between the home of her self-centered, globetrotting mother and her eccentric Park Avenue grandparents. Burden offers fascinating and voyeuristic insights into a little-known segment of society, the mega-rich American plutocracy in decline.”
Library Journal

“This blueblood tale is spun so deftly and so charmingly that it is easy to forget that this it is essentially a sad story of family neglect and degeneration. Burden joins the ranks of such memoirists as Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris, who have successfully mined their dysfunctional childhoods for comedic gold.”
Booklist

“There’s great tragedy and sadness that runs through the last three generations of the book’s characters, and yet as I write this I find myself laughing at the memory of reading her descriptions and reactions to the world presented to her by fate (and genes). You will too.”
New York Social Diary

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