Society as I Have Found It

By: Ward McAllister

Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot

Ward McAllister lived in the mid-to-late nineteenth-century USA. This audiobook encompasses his commentary on the parties held by the elite in the USA and Europe during that time.

Well-connected and well-traveled, McAllister describes the habits, trends, and wealth of the upper classes of society. As the author testifies, it was a time of transformative, unprecedented extravagance through the emergence of new technology and new prosperity.

The location of the social gathering in which McAllister attended during this time isn’t limited to the USA, but encompasses much of Europe as well.

Public Domain (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing

How to serve wine to impress

I loved the language and tips on selecting, storing and serving wines. The reader was very pleasant and I felt I was lisyening to the author.

Great listen with interesting perspective

Ok, I will be honest. I got this book because in The Gilded Age this book was so scandalous. By today’s standards, it’s very tame, but still a very interesting listen to get a truly inside glimpse of the inner workings of the time.

Interesting only to those who want to understand McAllister and his 200

If you’re a fan of TV shows such as HBO‘s the Gilded Age, you know who ward McAllister is. He was sort of the manipulator of high society in New York City in the Gilded Age. This book shared secrets of members of that high society with anyone who could afford a copy and resulted in him being kicked out of that same society, unceremoniously. The problem is it’s really boring. Maybe at the time it would’ve been titillating, but it’s really badly written. As such it’s mostly interesting as a historical document.

Perfect choice of narrator

Ward Mcallister’s inside look at New York Gilded Age society is well served by Bronson Pinchot’s soft-spoken narration. As social arbitre to the 400, Mcallister dolled out advice on entertaining, manners, dining, and drinking. Although he did not name drop in the original book once it was published the names of New York socialites eventually made their way to print. it seems that a first edition of Society As I Have Found It given by Mcallister to the New York Historical Society was personally annotated by him in the margins, revealing all.

Not salacious

This book being a scandal is hilarious. He doesn’t name drop the women he speaks of. Majority of this book is about entertaining and serving French food. lol.