Archie and Amelie: Love and Madness in the Gilded Age (ISBN 1400048524)

Scarlett before Scarlett:
I could not put this book down. That's something to say for a biography--or dual biography, actually. I was astonished at the ease with which Ms. Lucey spun off on side stories of interesting relatives or events without ever losing the train of the main story. Her depth of research, all well documented, is mind-boggling. Even the acknowledgements, where she tells about her interviews and the serendipitous discovery of an old trunk full of letters, was intriguing. Archie and Amelie were fascinating, larger-than-life people living in a larger-than-life age and circumstance. It's no small feat to present such a grand coming together and coming undone against an equally complex and theatrical backdrop. I couldn't help wondering if Margaret Mitchell knew of Amelie's story (which was well covered in newspapers at the time) and fashioned Scarlett after this bewitching woman since Scarlett's personality was dead on. It's one thing to read of such a fictional character, quite another to know the subject was a real person. All in all, a terrific read. Highly recommended.

Interesting Life and Times, but....:
I read the Kindle version of this book. The Kindle edition was fine---I had no problems, you could even view the pictures. The book itself was interesting but I did have some reservations. The summary of the book talks about a volatile relationship with drugs, wealth, and scandal. That would grab anyone! However, I found that most of that was just talk. Yes, those elements were present in the book and their lives. However, the book just falls short of truly engaging you in that scandal. The window that you are looking through into their lives is clouded because who they are is stated, but you never really get a true grasp of who that person truly was or what the real issues were. The drugs and illicit activities are hinted at but never really delved into. You do feel for Archie and Amelie but you come away from the book not with satisfaction of having read a good book, but with questions and not feeling like it was really ended. For all of the inuendo in the description, the book falls flat in comparison.

Love and madness doesn't go far enough:
This book has many interesting things to say about the lives of John Armstrong Chanler, the heir of the Astor fortune, and his lover/wife Ameile Rives, but I couldn't help feeling like I was reading someone's college thesis paper. I think it could have been edited into a smaller novella, or broadened to read more like historical fiction.

Interesting story:
This is a book about real people that lived in the mid to late 1880s into the 1900's. ARchie is from the wealthy Astor family with tons of money and marries a woman from the south that has respect but no money since the civil war ruined them. She is a writer of "scandalous books" for that time. She is very exotic and Archie is obsessed with her. She dumps him and marries a Russian prince that has no money and Archie continues to support her and her family. His family turns on him and he actually serves 4 years in a rich person's nut house. It gives you a real taste of how "those people" lived during that time period. I love reading books about real people in the past, especially those that were really rich. A nice love story but kind of sad too.

Archie and Amelie by Donna M. Lucey:
Loved this book, especially since I knew nothing about Archie and Amelie as my readings on the Astors deals primarily with the founding fathers ... they were not right for each other and despite all their respective intellects - - - something was wrong with what appeared to be a woman in the relationship and Amelie used Archie mercilessly, as she did with everybody else! At the end she got what she put into her life.