{"id":8414,"date":"2010-08-23T01:51:44","date_gmt":"2010-08-23T01:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=8414"},"modified":"2015-06-29T20:36:57","modified_gmt":"2015-06-29T20:36:57","slug":"passing-strange-a-gilded-age-tale-of-love-and-deception-across-the-color-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=8414","title":{"rendered":"Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line"},"content":{"rendered":"

Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Penguin Press<\/a>
\n2009-02-05
\n384 pages
\n5.98 x 9.01in
\nHardcover ISBN 9781594202001<\/p>\n

Martha A. Sandweiss<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of History
\nPrinceton University<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

National Book Critics Circle Awards Winner<\/strong><\/p>\n

The secret double life of the man who mapped the American West and the woman he loved<\/em><\/p>\n

Clarence King<\/a> is a hero of nineteenth-century western history. Brilliant scientist and witty conversationalist, bestselling author and architect of the great surveys that mapped the West<\/a> after the Civil War<\/a>, King was named by John Hay<\/a> \u201cthe best and brightest of his generation.\u201d But King hid a secret from his Gilded Age<\/a> cohorts and prominent family in Newport: for thirteen years he lived a double life\u2014as the celebrated white explorer, geologist, and writer Clarence King and as a black Pullman porter<\/a> and steelworker named James Todd. The fair, blue-eyed son of a wealthy China trader passed<\/a> across the color line, revealing his secret to his black common-law wife, Ada King, only on his deathbed.<\/p>\n

Noted historian of the American West Martha Sandweiss is the first writer to uncover the life that King tried so hard to conceal from the public eye. She reveals the complexity of a man who while publicly espousing a personal dream of a uniquely American \u201crace,\u201d an amalgam of white and black, hid his love for his wife and their five biracial children.<\/strong> Passing Strange<\/em> tells the dramatic tale of a family built along the fault lines of celebrity, class, and race\u2014from the \u201cTodds\u201d wedding in 1888 to the 1964 death of Ada, one of the last surviving Americans born into slavery, to finally the legacy inherited by Clarence King\u2019s granddaughter, who married a white man and adopted a white child in order to spare her family the legacies of racism.<\/p>\n

A remarkable feat of research and reporting spanning the Civil War to the civil rights era<\/a>, Passing Strange<\/em> tells a uniquely American story of self-invention, love, deception, and race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line The Penguin Press 2009-02-05 384 pages 5.98 x 9.01in Hardcover ISBN 9781594202001 Martha A. Sandweiss, Professor of History Princeton University National Book Critics Circle Awards Winner The secret double life of the man who mapped the American West and the woman […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1245,11,459,8,17,6462,20],"tags":[3562,3561,3564,3565],"class_list":["post-8414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","category-books","category-history","category-media-archive","category-monographs","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-martha-a-sandweiss","tag-martha-sandweiss","tag-penguiun-press","tag-the-penguiun-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}