Communists vilified her as a raging neurotic. Leftists dismissed her as a confused idealist. Her family pitied her as an exploited lover. Some said she was a traitor, a stooge, a mercenary, and a grandstander. To others she was a true American heroine -- fearless, principled, bold, and resolute. Congressional committees loved her. The FBI hailed her as an avenging angel. The Catholics embraced her. But the fact is, more than a half century after she captured the headlines as the "Red Spy Queen," Elizabeth Bentley remains a mystery.
New England-born, conservatively raised, and Vassar-educated, Bentley was groomed for a quiet life, a small life, which she explored briefly in the 1920s as a teacher, instructing well-heeled young women on the beauty of Romance languages at an East Coast boarding school. But in her mid-twenties she rejected both past and future and set herself on an entirely new course. In the 1930s she embraced communism and fell in love with an undercover KGB agent who initiated her into the world of espionage. By the time America plunged into World War II, Elizabeth Bentley was directing the operations of the two largest spy rings in America. Eventually, she had eighty people in her secret apparatus, half of them employees of the federal government. Her sources were everywhere: in the departments of Treasury and Commerce, in New Deal agencies, in the top-secret OSS (the precursor to the CIA), on congressional committees, even in the Oval Office.
When she defected in 1945 and told her story -- first to the FBI and then at a series of public hearings and trials -- she was catapulted to tabloid fame as the "Red Spy Queen," ushering in, almost single-handedly, the McCarthy Era. She was the government's star witness, the FBI's most important informer, and the darling of the Catholic anticommunist movement. Her disclosures and accusations put a halt to Russian spying for years and helped to set the tone of American postwar political life.
But who was she? A smart, independent woman who made her choices freely, right and wrong, and had the strength of character to see them through? Or was she used and manipulated by others?
Clever Girl is the definitive biography of a conflicted American woman and her controversial legacy. Set against the backdrop of the political drama that defined mid-twentieth century America, it explores the spy case whose explosive domestic and foreign policy repercussions have been debated for decades but not fully revealed -- until now.

Clever Girl: Elizabeth Bentley, the Spy Who Ushered in the McCarthy Era

Biographies & Memoirs

Kessler, Lauren

Community & Culture

Harper

Communists vilified her as a raging neurotic. Leftists dismissed her as a confused idealist. Her family pitied her as an exploited lover. Some said she was a traitor, a stooge, a mercenary and a grandstander. To others she was a true American heroine—fearless, principled, bold and resolute. Congressional committees loved her. The FBI hailed her as an avenging angel. The Catholics embraced her. But the fact is, more than half a century after she captured the headlines as the "Red Spy Queen," Elizabeth Bentley remains a mystery.
New England-born, conservatively raised, and Vassar-educated, Bentley was groomed for a quiet life, a small life, which she explored briefly in the 1920s as a teacher, instructing well-heeled young women on the beauty of Romance languages at an east coast boarding school. But in her mid-twenties, she rejected both past and future and set herself on an entirely new course. In the 1930s she embraced communism and fell in love with an undercover KGB agent who initiated her into the world of espionage. By the time America plunged into WWII, Elizabeth Bentley was directing the operations of the two largest spy rings in America. Eventually, she had eighty people in her secret apparatus, half of them employees of the federal government. Her sources were everywhere: in the departments of Treasury and Commerce, in New Deal agencies, in the top-secret OSS (the precursor to the CIA), on Congressional committees, even in the Oval Office.
When she defected in 1945 and told her story—first to the FBI and then at a series of public hearings and trials—she was catapulted to tabloid fame as the "Red Spy Queen," ushering in, almost single-handedly, the McCarthy Era. She was the government’s star witness, the FBI’s most important informer, and the darling of the Catholic anti-Communist movement. Her disclosures and accusations put a halt to Russian spying for years and helped to set the tone of American postwar political life.
But who was she? A smart, independent woman who made her choices freely, right and wrong, and had the strength of character to see them through? Or was she used and manipulated by others? Clever Girl is the definitive biography of a conflicted American woman and her controversial legacy. Set against the backdrop of the political drama that defined mid-twentieth century America, it explores the spy case whose explosive domestic and foreign policy repercussions have been debated for decades but not fully revealed—until now.

History

Americas

Harper-perennial

Previously published in Hardcover as Dancing With Rose One journalist's riveting and surprisingly hopeful in-the-trenches view of Alzheimer's Nearly five million people in the United States are living with Alzheimer's. Like many children of Alzheimer's sufferers, Lauren Kessler, an accomplished journalist, was devastated by the disease that seemed to erase her mother's identity even before claiming her life. But suppose people with Alzheimer's are not slates wiped blank. Suppose they experience friendship and loss, romance and jealousy, joy and sorrow? To better understand this debilitating condition, Kessler enlists as a bottom-of-the-rung caregiver at an Alzheimer's facility and learns lessons that challenge what we think we know about the disease. A compelling, clear-eyed, and emotionally resonant narrative, Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer's offers a new optimistic look at what the disease can teach us and a much-needed tonic for those faced with providing care for someone they love.

Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer's: One Daughter's Hopeful Story

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Mental Health

Penguin Publishing Group

"Straight from the trenches, a mom's tale of weathering her daughter's transformation from sweetheart to snark mouth." - PeopleWith the eye of a reporter, the curiosity of an anthropologist, and the open-and sometimes wounded-heart of a mother, award-winning author Lauren Kessler launches an eighteen-month mission, embedding herself in her about-to-be-teenage daughter Lizzie's life. Everywhere from middle school classrooms to the mall, from summer camp to online chat groups, Kessler observes and chronicles-and sometimes participates in-the vibrant, dynamic, and scary life of a twenty-first-century teen.

My Teenage Werewolf: A Mother, a Daughter, a Journey Through the Thicket of Adolescence

Politics & Social Sciences

Sociology

A resonant and timely story about love, loss, and forging a path forward in the aftermath of grief &nbsp; "It is solved by walking," goes the oft-quoted wisdom attributed to Saint Augustine. Lauren Kessler, an unflinching immersion journalist, is not a religious person. But after tragedy shattered the contours of her life, she needed to move--to do something, to be somewhere else. So she set out alone on the famed Camino de Santiago, walking across Spain to create space between the life she'd lived and the life she hadn't chosen but now inhabited. &nbsp; Everything Changes Everything is a story about facing what we'd rather avoid, about the wounds we carry, hide, and--sometimes--heal. It's about the privilege of choosing hardship, the grace of temporary friendship, the solace of kindred spirits, and the power of movement to unstick what's stuck. It's also about unfounded optimism, unlikely laughter, and the way grief and beauty can coexist in a single step. &nbsp; Both raw and luminous, Everything Changes Everything is a meditation on what it means to keep walking when the ground gives way beneath us.

Everything Changes Everything: Love, Loss, and a Really Long Walk

Travel

Europe

Balance

An award-winning author's journey to break out of the expectations of midlife and reclaim the daring of her girlhood by dancing in the world's most popular ballet, The Nutcracker, with a professional company. Like generations of little girls, Lauren Kessler fell in love with ballet the first time she saw The Nutcracker, and from that day, at age five, she dreamed of becoming a ballerina. But when she was twelve, her very famous ballet instructor crushed those dreams-along with her youthful self-assurance-and she stepped away from the barre. Fast forward four decades. Lauren-suddenly, powerfully, itchingly restless at midlife-embarks on a "Transcontinental Nutcracker Binge Tour," where attending a string of performances in Chicago, New York, Boston, and San Francisco reignites her love affair with the ballet-and fuels her girlhood dream. What ensues is not only a story about The Nutcracker itself, but also an inside look at the seemingly romantic-but oh-so-gritty-world of ballet, about all that happens away from the audience's eye that precedes the magic on stage. It is a tale told from the perspective of someone who not only loves it, but is also seeking to live it. Lauren's quest to dance The Nutcracker with the Eugene Ballet Company tackles the big issues: fear, angst, risk, resilience, the refusal to "settle in" to midlife, the refusal to become yet another Invisible Woman. It is also a very funny, very real look at what it's like to push yourself further than you ever thought you could go-and what happens when you get there.

Raising the Barre: Big Dreams, False Starts, and My Midlife Quest to Dance the Nutcracker

Humor & Entertainment

Da Capo

The Happy Bottom Riding Club: The Life and Times of Pancho Barnes

Pancho Barnes was a force of nature, a woman who lived a big, messy, colorful, unconventional life. She ran through three fortunes, four husbands, and countless lovers. She outflew Amelia Earhart, outsmarted Howard Hughes, outdrank the Mexican Army, and out- maneuvered the U.S. government. In The Happy Bottom Riding Club, award-winning author Lauren Kessler tells the story of a high-spirited, headstrong woman who was proud of her successes, unabashed by her failures, and the architect of her own legend. Florence "Pancho" Barnes was a California heiress who inherited a love of flying from her grandfather, a pioneer balloonist in the Civil War. Faced with a future of domesticity and upper-crust pretensions, she ran away from her responsibilities as wife and mother to create her own life. She cruised South America. She trekked through Mexico astride a burro. She hitchhiked halfway across the United States. Then, in the late 1920s, she took to the skies, one of a handful of female pilots. She was a barnstormer, a racer, a cross-country flier, and a Hollywood stunt pilot. She was, for a time, "the fastest woman on earth," flying the fastest civilian airplane in the world. She was an intimate of movie stars, a script doctor for the great director Erich von Stroheim, and, later in life, a drinking buddy of the supersonic jet jockey Chuck Yeager. She ran a wild and wildly successful desert watering hole known as the Happy Bottom Riding Club, the raucous bar and grill depicted in The Right Stuff. In The Happy Bottom Riding Club, Lauren Kessler presents a portrait, both authoritative and affectionate, of a woman who didn't play by women's rules, a woman of large appetites--emotional, financial, and sexual--who called herself "the greatest conversation piece that ever existed."

Random House]

In 1903, Masuo Yasui came to America and eventually became a successful orchardist and father of eight children. But the "relocation" of Japanese Americans during World War II caused Yasui to take his own life. The Yasui family opened its records and memories to Lauren Kessler, who writes a social history that rings with truth and drama. Photographs.

Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family

Plume

Chronicles the story of the new coach and her underdog women's basketball team at the University of Oregon who overcame administrative and technical obstacles to play a winning season

Full-Court Press: Season Life Winning Basketball Team Women Who Made it Happen

Kessler and McDonald's WHEN WORDS COLLIDE is praised by students for its straightforward and clear-almost conversational-presentation of grammar. This versatile grammar and usage handbook will work for you as a beginning student and as you continue as a media writer. It provides concise, clear explanations and examples, as well as quick and accurate answers to grammar or usage questions. The unique 'from writer to writer' perspective guides you through the writing process.

When Words Collide: A Media Writer’s Guide to Grammar and Style

Business & Money

McDonald, Duncan

Industries

Cengage Learning'

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kessler, Lauren. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Kessler, Lauren

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kessler, Lauren. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Clever Girl: Elizabeth Bentley, the Spy Who Ushered in the McCarthy Era

Clever Girl: Elizabeth Bentley, the Spy Who Ushered in the McCarthy Era

Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer's: One Daughter's Hopeful Story

My Teenage Werewolf: A Mother, a Daughter, a Journey Through the Thicket of Adolescence

Everything Changes Everything: Love, Loss, and a Really Long Walk

Raising the Barre: Big Dreams, False Starts, and My Midlife Quest to Dance the Nutcracker

The Happy Bottom Riding Club: The Life and Times of Pancho Barnes

Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family

Full-Court Press: Season Life Winning Basketball Team Women Who Made it Happen

When Words Collide: A Media Writer’s Guide to Grammar and Style